The Whole Thing

Escape from NoHo - Part 1

Here's an update, in the form of a geo-positional overview, though I can't say I'm truly re-settled except in the sense that I'm done moving out of one place, have moved into another, and have no desperately urgent need to move again.

When I started this blog last September, I was living a few blocks from Jimi Hendrix Street in North Hollywood (aka NoHo), California. Around either corner were the entertainment industry dining spots Ca Del Sole and Barzac, and up the street (via Jimi Hendrix) was Universal City, the home of Universal Studios and allied properties (including the theme park). In honor of Universal and in what I guess was an interpretation of a gradual north-south incline, my apartment building was named "Studio Heights," and it appeared to have been designed so that, when viewed from across the street, its two interconnected four-story towers would suggest a strip of celluloid film - the apartment windows as sprocket holes, the landings together with the inside-facing walls forming frames (or "cells," as they say). From my own top-floor skylit apartment, I had an unobstructed view of richly foliate semi-suburbs and the humpbacked hillside that comprises the northern edge of L.A.'s gargantuan Griffith Park: You all know Griffith Park, or adequately picturesque parts of it, from movies like the TERMINATOR, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, and THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, among many thousands of others.

After an exhausting move-out, I'm now 36.2 Mapquest miles southeast of and at least four stories below Studio Heights, in the community of La Verne. You may be surprised to learn that you probably know La Verne, too: I happened to notice in the INLAND DAILY BULLETIN that Dustin Hoffman has been visiting "again," in (further) commemoration of the filming of THE GRADUATE somewhere in these parts, and it occurs to me that there actually is a bit of late-onset Benjaminism in my current predicament, even if there's nothing in the immediate vicinity to make one think "plastics!" or "Mrs. Robinson" or "Scarborough Fair." The town of Claremont, which has been said to boast more churches per capita than any other city in the world, shares the same area code, and around the middle-middle class housing inlet where the dogs and I have landed, the ambience is much more "Real America" than '60s social statement, with full-sized Old Glories, "Support Our Troops!" lawn placards, and big yellow ribbons impossible to miss, sometimes to be found together for two, three, four houses in a row.

Such manifestations of patriotism were rare to non-existent in my former neighborhood, but the move has required less of an adjustment than one might expect. One advantage of anomie is continuity: One can feel alone and unknown anywhere and everywhere - wherever you go, there you aren't. In another sense, this escape from NoHo may merely be the outward confirmation of my own longer-term internal evolution, though, in the typically sloppy manner of such life changes, it's also an exaggerated overcompensation. The next step for me may be a backward re-approximation, maybe around 18.1 miles and two stories closer to my former universe - but I could also see myself settling into some unexpected new orbit or accelerating to full SoCal escape velocity.

What La Verne is offering me for now is some time to think, reflect... and send my resume around. It is not, however, offering me anything like my former access to cable news, nor yet even to the blogosphere: I'm limping along on someone else's computer, and my own TV doesn't even pick up PBS, much less CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. I can catch snippets, but I have little chance for now of staying on top of the news and meta-news cycle. If I find myself able to return to favorite past topics - the Rs and Ds, war, the media, and so on - I may have to do so as from a greater remove.

I'd also like to make additional observations on the removal itself. The posts that result will inevitably be biographical, maybe even excruciatingly so, but anyone who has read this far is probably also well aware that the distance between the personal microcosm and the social-historical-political macrocosm is often smaller than it seems. Even if I can't be clued in on every twist and turn regarding Bush's National Guard service or Kerry's internal affairs, or whatever other latest pseudo-scandal or fantasy-catastrophe, I hope and trust that what I have to say will remain a valid reflection on and of the Whole Thing.

Blatant Appeal for a Clue

Seems that while I was away (actually, I'm still more or less away, see below), I received credit at the Kausfiles last Friday for being among the first to note that Howard Dean's problems are typical for a doctor. I wish I'd known - as I may have missed the opportunity to APPEAL BLATANTLY TO ALL AND SUNDRY FOR A JOB (or at least a clue)!

I've been unable to focus on blogging - or even to begin to consider the possibility of thinking about getting around to coming up with some semblance of a facsimile of even an imitation of a worthwhile post - while I'm focused on the job hunt and on re-locating, projects that also happen to involve liquidating the last remnants of an estate and helping my sister and her children move on. In short, I've got a lot on my hands. I'm still debating with myself whether or not I should fill this blog with notes on the subject: It would set a much different tone and involve much different content than I've previously offered here. I've also only realized that potential employers might very well come to this site in the process of performing their due diligence (noticed a couple of unusual searches landing on my referrer's page - who knows?). What really would I want them to see?

Hey, prospective employer person, if you and yours are Dean supporters or Bush haters or committedly anti-war... well, some of my best and most beloved friends and most interesting acquaintances are, too... As for myself, I've not just been on both sides of the fence over the course of my life - I've been all over the region.

If I can't come up with something new and current, I may polish up and post a piece I wrote on this last subject. Otherwise, I expect that I'll get right back to full-part-time blogging as soon as I'm re-situated. In the meantime, if anyone has a position and/or a place for a literate and really quite charming if he needs to be (and he does) blogger (who's even been Instalanched, Kausfiled, Buzzmachinated, Prof-ranted, and Hammorabied - talk about qualifications!) and his two doggies, let me know...

Light posting...

Sorry not to have gotten this note up earlier, but I'll probably be doing very light posting, if any, until the New Year. Wish I could say I was taking a vacation, but the truth is that I have much pressing business to attend to.

...faellt mir nichts ein.

Regarding Saddam, now in custody, nothing occurs to me at all - at least nothing that won't already have been said or posted or shouted - or messaged from the barrel of an AK-47 aimed into the air. I'm happy to let the Iraqis, the CPA, the US military, President Bush, the anchors, the correspondents, the experts, and whoever else have the floor while I sit back and soak up the details that emerge about this long-awaited event.

I'm Pretty Sure...

...there must be a scandal here somewhere.

If you click on the "Take 2" icon, you'll get the shocking video. If you wait until the credits (or fast forward), you'll see evidence of damnable untruths from you-know-who...

Open War...

David's Medienkritik links to a story that deserves a lot more attention, in my opinion: Germany’s “Peace” Movement Actively and Openly Supporting Iraqi Terrorism. I know there was a similar story about similar activity in Italy a few weeks ago - activists raising funds for killers.

I'm not an expert on international law, but I believe that the United States - and other Coalition countries, too, for that matter - would be justified in demanding that such activities be terminated, and even of taking direct action themselves if the German civil authorities failed to do so. If this open support of war against the US and its allies is more than an ugly gesture - and possibly even if that's all it is - it may be time to make an example of someone.

Victor Davis Hanson...

...puts things in perspective as incisively as ever, but notes:

"We are beginning the third year of this multi-theater conflict, and it resembles the Punic War after the Carthaginian defeat at the Metaurus in 207 B.C."

C'mon, VDH! I mean, like, everyone knows thaaaat!

Probably Not the Worst Exaggeration in Two+ Centuries

As we well know, there are many devices in wide usage that Al Gore did not invent - among them the phrase that this or that Bush policy is the "worst ever." Such charges depend for their impact on the absence of interest, knowledge, or active intelligence among the already-persuaded or easily persuadable. Thus, even though evidence of recovery has reduced the frequency of "worst economic performance since Herbert Hoover" charges, the Democrats continue to describe post-Y2K job losses as the worst ever under a sitting president, homing in on that segment of the electorate so unfamiliar with economic matters that they would blame a president for a recession that began prior to his having been elected. Similarly, Gore's recent statements about the decision to remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power seek that segment of the electorate whose ignorance of history is matched only by the hypocrisy and moral dereliction of their would-be leaders.

Though Gore's remarks on Dean’s behalf have been reported widely, rightwing masochists may wish to sample the toweringly condescending, preaching to slow ESL schoolchildren flavor of Gore's stumpish statement directly, and may still be able to find a video at the C-SPAN site (Iraq comments begin at 20:22 of the RealPlayer file). Print quotations cannot convey the growling Gore guttural on words like "matter" ("no minor myaaaater"), off which his plangent pseudo-populist rhythms pivot. For those of us who have been dreading the prospect of a yearlong Dean campaign not least on aesthetic grounds, watching Gore in action is a reminder of just how unpleasant things might have gotten. For the rest of you, here is what Gore said after he and Dean had, in the words of CNN's Jeannie Moos, "spent the day holding hands, looking like twins in their blue ties, unbuttoning in unison":

I realize it’s only one of the issues, but, my friends, this nation has never in our two centuries and more made a worse foreign policy mistake than George W. Bush made in putting our troops into that quagmire in Iraq. It was a horrible judgment, misjudgment, and therefore it is not a minor matter to me that the only major candidate for the nomination of my party that had the good judgment, experience, and good sense to feel and see and articulate the right choice was Howard Dean.

This description of President Bush's Iraq policy outbids even Wesley Clark's claim that it represents America’s "greatest strategic blunder of the post-war era," but the two statements provide similar difficulties for anyone trying to figure out what, if anything, they are really supposed to mean. One problem is that the argument is being made from within the world's pre-eminently successful nation. The old saying meant to express the cynicism underlying politics, diplomacy, and war - "worse than a crime, it was a mistake" - applies less well to the United States than to most nations, for virtually everything that the United States has done in in the world has, in objective terms, sooner or later worked out alright, at least for the US. Our real, unsalvageable foreign policy mistakes have been the ones that ignore or contradict the country's unifying moral vision: the refusal to accept Jewish refugees during the Nazi years or, later on, to take direct action against the death camps; more recent failures to act in Rwanda, or earlier in Yugoslavia; or, more on point, the failure to defend Iraqis who partly at our urging rose up against Saddam in 1991, and who, along with their wives, children, and elders, died in the hundreds of thousands.

The narrowness of the Gore-Dean-Clark strategic vision is as dangerous as its moral blindness is unforgiveable. Thus, equally on point but less exclusively a moral "mistake," the long policy of compromise, complacency, and retreat in the Middle East - from Lebanon, through Somalia, through Saddam's ceasefire violations, through the first WTC attack and the embassy bombings, among many other provocations - arguably did great harm to American interests, inviting escalation up to the events of 9/11/01. The Democrats now loudly promise more of the same, beginning with the handover of responsibility in Iraq to the UN - the kind of simultaneous strategic and moral failure that led a retreating United States to involve itself in WW I, create the League of Nations, but then flee the scene. There have been so many lies and distortions spread around Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other Cold War episodes, that I hesitate to pass judgments, but bringing down Mossadegh in Iran in favor of the Shah may have been another such two-sided blunder, with dire effects on our own interests and on the entire region - beginning thirty years before Ronald Reagan sent Marines to Beirut, and still being endured in the present day.

Democrats like Gore and Dean dispute the relevance of Iraq to the "War on Terror," but this argument is a position, not a fact, regardless of the state of evidence regarding Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda. What seems undeniable to me is that, just as 9/11 represented one of the worst attacks by foreigners on US soil since the War of 1812 (arguably another great American blunder), and bespoke further dangers as great or greater than any the republic has faced since its founding, the strategic response has entailed some of the most ambitious goals that US policy makers have ever set before us, and some of the greatest risks that they have ever taken. In this context, it is far too early to declare the Bush policy either a success or a failure. At this stage even a merely preliminary overall assessment would remain subject to reversal by the next news alert.

How the Democrats' imaginary President Gore or the Republicans' nightmare President Dean would really have responded to the strategic challenges of our times, if either had been in office rather than President Bush, is an unanswerable question, but we can draw the outlines at least of what the Democrats want us to believe they would have done - and I hope to make an examination of this alternative scenario and its larger implications the topic of a future post. In the meantime, on Iraq specifically, it's worth recalling that, a few years ago, Gore was willing to claim that failing to march on Baghdad to finish Gulf War 1 was also a mistake. What's changed for him, other than political convenience? In his endorsement speeches Gore shrugged a concession regarding Saddam - admitting that we were "all better off without him." In other words, he believes that this worst of all mistakes did some real good for "all" of us. Obviously, Gore assesses the costs - either those already incurred or those he's seen in his perfect vision of the future - as too great. If so, then he may be seeking to re-invent JFK's famous call to the defense of freedom as "bear only small burdens, only at a low price." Or maybe his statements are so vacuous, so desperately unserious that they’re offensive - even if Iraq is "only one of the issues."

A Moving Announcement

Norman Geras's blog manages to be warmly congenial when not absolutely essential. Having recently joined the vast Typepad conspiracy, Norm is moving normblog to a new address.

While you're updating your links, consider taking another look through normblog's archives. There may have been no more eloquent and thoughtful statement of the moral case for action against Saddam Hussein, and against the anti-war movement's presumptions, than Norm's essay "The War in Iraq": If you have an intelligent Leftist or Left-leaning friend who cannot understand why you would not join the peace marchers or attend your local Howard Dean "meet-up," consider any means necessary to force him or her to read and absorb Norm's arguments.

Ahlan wa Sahlan to Visitors from Hammorabi!

When I noticed on my stats page that I was getting a rush of visitors from Sam's Hammorabi blog, I at first wondered why a single comment I left under one of his posts might have attracted so much attention. I attributed the new traffic to the popularity of the Iraqi bloggers, whom many of us consider the most welcome new additions to the blogosphere since the blogosphere was born, but last night, when I returned to Hammorabi, I was surprised and a little disbelieving when I saw my own blog enrolled near the top of the page. I immediately clicked on the link, just to be sure that there wasn't some other "The Whole Thing" out there that Sam had picked up.

It's hard for us who supported the liberation of Iraq not to see the emergence of these vital new voices as unambiguous proof that we were on the right side: If bloggers like Sam, Omar, Alaa, and Zeyad represented only 1% of the Iraqi population - indeed, if they were the only Iraqis exulting in their new freedoms - it would arguably be moral justification for America's best efforts on their behalf, especially in light of the moral debt that America and its allies owe Iraq after decades of compromises with Saddam, countless billions of petrodollars to his regime, more than a decade of economic sanctions that hurt average Iraqis before they came close to touching the supposed targets, and multiple betrayals of Iraqis who fought Saddam at least partly at our urging. I don't mean to suggest that any nation can base its policies on the fates of a handful of individuals - that would obviously be naive - but I strongly believe that these men stand for a better future, not just for Iraq but for all of us. I'm sure that, after getting to know Sam and his colleagues, most Americans would, like me, find the idea of abandoning them unbearable even to contemplate.

For these reasons and others, I have to say that I feel honored to have my blog listed so prominently at Hammorabi. (Even if it's some kind of mistake, then I still thank Sam for the new traffic accidentally sent my way!) For those of you who came here hoping to find another unique and invigorating Iraqi voice, and are perhaps disappointed, I hope you will look around a little anyway, get something out of whatever you find, and feel free to leave any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Salaam, Shalom, and Seeyalater

A Modest Proposal

From Healing Iraq:

By the way, what the hell are news organizations trying to prove by putting terrorism between idiotic quotation marks like this? I've decided to put quotation marks myself on the following terms: 'news organizations', 'media', 'press', 'coverage, 'reporter', and 'journalist'. F*ing morons.

Let's try it out: "Reporter" Walt Rodgers of CNN recently criticized the way that the Iraqi Governing Council responded to "news organization" Al-Arabiya's airing of full, unedited audiotapes apparently from Saddam Hussein.

Or how about: "Reporter" Dana Milbank of the Washington Post seems downright upset that the turkey President Bush was holding in widely distributed photographs of his Thanksgiving Day Baghdad visit was not actually the same turkey that was served to American troops.

Works for me.

MORE BUSH LIES!

From President Discusses Trip to Iraq with Reporters:

THE PRESIDENT: ...They pulled up kind of a plain-looking vehicle with tinted windows and I slipped on a baseball cap and pulled her down, as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple. (Laughter.)
Q On your way to the Walmart. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: To buy some Berkeley Power worms. (Laughter.)
Q Pulling a bass boat behind you? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, exactly.

I'm sure that the investigative reporters at our major news organizations are hot on the trail of new, explosive revelations: That Condi and Bush are not a "normal" couple, since interracial relationships especially in the Bush-Rice age group are still rare enough not to fit many definitions of "normal," and that there may well be no evidence that the President went anywhere near a Walmart, bought any worms, or hitched up a boat to the SUV. That would make four brazen lies, one after another. I can't believe Paul Begala or at least Democratic Underground hasn't been all over this.

Current Discussion: Iraqis will finish off the Baath Party

With a hit by Instapundit and an inspiration from Alaa at Healing Iraq, Dale Amon's suggestion on the already-popular Samizdata site that Iraqis will finish off the Baath Party, and should simply be allowed to do so, has already started some useful discussion. One respondent, RAS, in the post's comment section, makes the sensible argument that, instead of backing the "rats" into a corner, the Coalition should be offering the Iraqi resistance some reasonable calculation from self-interest leading them to surrender or leave the field. In theory, they may eventually see the Coalition as offering them a better chance for survival (in some instances even prosperity) than their fellow Iraqis. My own take, in the post's comments section, extends the same line of argumentation advanced in "Already Over," and also looks to the calculation from self-interest that the Bush Doctrine has been seeking to impress upon Iraqis, Palestinians, and the entire Muslim world.

Thanksgiving + Funerals = Balance

Though Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine, Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping, and others have all taken turns exposing the artificiality of the "Bush doesn't go to soldiers' funerals" story, no one has been on it like our favorite ranting professor, even while she's been focusing even greater energy on media reaction to Bush's Thanksgiving surprise. Now, as her most recent "News Cycle Roundup" makes plain, the two themes have been joined together, with a big help from former Clinton spokesperson Joe Lockhart.

The soldiers' funerals story, which provides an easy way to "balance" the positive PR from the Baghdad trip, has been generated in somewhat the same way that the equally inflated uranium-Niger story was created over the Summer. First, an op-ed appears that makes the initial charge. Then, a series of follow-ups in the news pages, often in the form of oblique references rather than direct reporting or analysis, build a background buzz. By the time the narrow item has been broadened into some generalized assault - "Bush lied about Saddam's nuclear program" or "Bush avoids grieving families" - it can also be treated as common knowledge, especially by Bush's political enemies. It then falls to people like Professor Dauber to sort fact from fiction, and to try to force the mainstream media to do their jobs.

I think that in the past, before the existence of the blogosphere, the media must have gotten away with this stuff regularly, but were also much more concerned about being responsible: There were fewer outlets and fewer sources, and being exposed as biased and incompetent might have carried a heavier price. It is also generally believed that the press and public during the period between World War II and Vietnam were loathe to think the worst about our political leaders, and were at the same time more unabashedly patriotic.

This story has been told many times before, and, perhaps because it's usually told by the press itself, the moral is usually that we have all become more cynical, and wiser, but that journalists learned to revere the truth, however unpleasant. Yet in our own time, an alternative narrative is developing, one of media bias and politicization sometimes attributed to fragmentation and at other times, paradoxically, to overconcentration of ownership. Whether seen as corporate flunkies or the pampered products of liberal elite indoctrination, journalists are no longer trusted to tell the truth. As though to pre-empt the criticism, and simultaneously to lend their reporting an element of lively narrative tension, they constantly strive to give an impression that they are seeking to tell the "fair and balanced" truth - equally an impression that they would tell the truth even if it happened to be very unpleasant.

As we've seen over and over again in recent years, the result is that every hint of scandal is treated as a potential Watergate and every hint of a military setback recalls Vietnam. It also seems to mean that journalists are willing to spread ugly falsehoods when there's no other way to prove their willingness to tell ugly truths.

Blame It On Cronkite

Maybe it's all Walter Cronkite's fault.

Cronkite is, of course, the living icon of journalistic integrity, the once-upon-a-time "most trusted man in America," and there is much in his career, going all the way back to the 1930s, to admire. Yet what is by now his most famous gesture as a journalist had little or nothing to do with reporting controversial facts, but rather with choosing sides - when, following the Tet Offensive in early 1968, he turned openly against US policy in Vietnam in a just-back from the front commentary - the "We Are Mired In Stalemate" broadcast:

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster... To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Today, it is perhaps depressing enough to consider that this doubly, triply historical broadcast - a moment of cultural history that also affected political and military history - falls under a clumsy mixed metaphor, but at the time, for those fighting the war or struggling to reach judgments about it, the effect of having Mr. Trusted speaking out so unambiguously - and in terms of "cosmic disaster" and "the only rational way out" - must truly have been bracing. President Johnson himself is said to have been shaken: "We've lost Cronkite," he complained privately. Some historians go so far as to suggest that the broadcast was crucial to Johnson's strategic decision to press for negotiations with the North Vietnamese and not to seek re-election.

To be fair, the Johnson Administration and the Pentagon had done much to soften themselves up prior to the breakthrough on their media front, but no one was positioned better than Cronkite to lead the charge. Like so many present-day journalistic field marshalls, but after a Biblical generation before the public's eyes and ears whenever all eyes were focused and all ears attuned, Cronkite spoke as though qualified to render sweeping military, political, and historical judgments. He was in a unique position to vouch for himself, and his language implied - indeed, insisted - that these judgements were much wiser than those of "military and political analysts" whose opinions he gave only an "off chance" of being "right." But it is now a widely held, virtually consensual view among historians that those military and political analysts were much closer to the ground truth than Cronkite, and that the US and its South Vietnamese allies had achieved a major victory on the field, effectively neutralizing the Viet Cong as a military force. The setback to the US effort was political, not military, and would likely not have been exploitable without the active cooperation and intervention of homefront opinion leaders such as Cronkite.

As a matter of fact, even Cronkite's other most famous tele-journalistic act - though not one that anybody would criticize - was breaking journalistic objectivity to shed a tear for JFK. That other founding father of modern television journalism, Edward R. Murrow, is best remembered for humiliating Joseph McCarthy. And, of course, the great paragons of reporting, Woodward & Bernstein, were famous for bringing down a Republican. Now, I'm not about to suggest that these men were wrong or anything but scrupulously honest in their efforts. Nor do I believe that Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Aaron Brown spend their days searching for a way to advance their political agendas. Still, they and their peers from the top to the bottom of the news business have been taught and, more important, have been shown, that bias, though it should be suppressed and combatted, is unavoidable - and that, at a certain point and in a certain way, when the journalist moves from reporting facts to constructing them, it can become the highest expression of their craft. Furthermore, whether or not you're convinced of Cronkite's, Murrow's, or Woodstein's correctness, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the model for American journalism, the frame of frames, has been built on a left-tilting template, with Cronkite in particular having established the pattern of earning the people's trust, then pushing his own policy position.

As I've argued elsewhere, the war in Iraq gives America a chance to re-fight Tet symbolically - and this time to accept and exploit our victory, and at a much lower cost to all concerned. As far as the media are concerned, such an outcome - the final and conclusive contradiction of every self-assured mini-Cronkite's proclamation of "quagmire" or "disaster" - would be a new confirmation of Marx's first time as tragedy, second as farce rule. Increasingly, exposing all the "most trusted" media venues as not trustworthy at all - from the Howell Raines/Jayson Blair New York Times, to the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation and the Saddam-coddling CNN, and on and on, wherever the words "quagmire" and "American military" have appeared together - appears to be essential to the restoration of America's credibility, not just to its enemies but to its friends and even to itself.

If it's an ugly job, blame it on Cronkite, or on the caveman reflex that attributes oracular powers to the demon in the box, but we must destroy the global village in order to save it.

Divergence Suspended

Collin May's "Falling France" series at Innocents Abroad has been as good or better than I anticipated. It continues today with the last of three posts on Andre Glucksmann.

While awaiting the series' conclusion and absorbing its content, I may refrain from extending or editing my own notes on the apparent divergence (The Divergence, 1, 2, 3, 4) between US and European interests.

Current Discussion...

Some unusually well-informed and articulate participants on both sides of the Iraq war debate, and from across the political spectrum, can be encountered in the comments section accompanying this post at Harry's Place. Some of the familiar leftist rhetoric being employed - "decadent ruling class" and so on - fills me with nostalgia...

Contemplating follow-up here on some arguments advanced by members of the pro- and anti-war left - mainly under the heading of the continuity of American strategy before and after 9/11.

Iraq's Dictator-in-Waiting

CNN's Walt Rodgers has made his triumphant return to Iraq. For now, Walt's greatest claim to fame remains his wartime reporting - offered as he sped through the sand with a phone-cam fixed squarely on a Bradley's tailpipe, keeping viewers worldwide awake only through his insistently staccato pronunciation of the word "Baghdad," which divided the city into two halves, Bag and Dad, something like historical Buda and Pest or contemporary Minneapolis and St. Paul. But he clearly has not wasted his few months away from the action, and is ready for bigger things. Indeed, he seems to be intent on leaving his press pass behind, and assuming simultaneous command both of the American military and of the nascent post-Saddam Iraqi judiciary. He was able on a Saturday Capital Gang segment, for instance, to explain in not too much detail that the current US counter-insurgency strategy is of a type that "never works." Today, he's passing judgment on the Iraqi Governing Council's decision to ban the TV station Al Arabiya, an action which Walt considers undemocratic. (He undoubtedly considers the decision to issue warnings to the BBC and, gasp!, CNN a crime against humanity, though he has yet to deliver his verdict publically.)

What's next for Walt? After US commanding General Abizaid has dutifully revised his strategy according to Walt's unstated precepts, and after the IGC's Jalal Talabani has reversed his terrible decisions, Walt may have a difficult choice to make. Should he satisfy himself producing the next tapes from Saddam Hussein advocating insurrection and murder, which CNN can share with its sister networks from the Arab world and beyond? Should he return to the United States and replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary? Or should William Rehnquist finally retire, and let Walt hand down the opinion establishing once and for all that the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded nightclub shall not be infringed? Or should Walt move next to Germany, where he can personally lift the ban on the works of Adolf Hitler; to Japan, where he can ensure that Aum Shin Rikyo gains full, unfettered access to all media; or to Latin America, where numerous groups that have previously resorted to hostage-taking in order to get their tracts published and recruitment videos aired would benefit greatly from Walt's intercession?

Such a big world, with so many people so desperately in need of Walt's wisdom - but maybe he should give Iraq another month or two, just to make sure everyone gets things exactly right. One wouldn't want the place to fall immediately back into darkness after his light has moved elswhere.

Reality Really Bites

Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, and Wesley Clark are all appalled, shocked, scandalized by the new RNC ad entitled "Reality": On MEET THE PRESS, Daschle called it "repulsive and outrageous," and stated his belief that the Republicans "ought to pull the ad." "We all want to defeat terrorism," he said, but "to chastise and to question the patriotism of those who are in opposition to some of the president's plans I think is wrong." Ted Kennedy spoke of an "attempt to stifle dissent." Clark spoke of the president violating his "pledge... to not exploit 9-11 for political purposes."

The 30-second ad in in its entirety runs as follows:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
CHYRON: Strong and Principled Leadership
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: "Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is power."
CHYRON: Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
CHYRON: Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others.
CHYRON: Call Congress Now
CHYRON: Tell them to support the President's policy of preemptive self-defense.
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ED GILLESPIE: "The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising."
CHYRON: Ed Gillespie
CHYRON: Chairman, RNC
CHYRON: The Republican National Committee paid for and is responsible for the content of this advertising. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. www.gop.com

As Professor Dauber has patiently ranted at Ranting Profs, strongly disagreeing with someone else's "model of strategic defense" is not the same as impugning their patriotism. This argument would be valid - indeed, it should be self-evident to anyone who claims to favor any discussion of policy alternatives at all - even if the ad mentioned the Democrats, or for that matter even mentioned 9/11, or for that matter came right out and said, "Those Democrats, especially Daschle, Kennedy, Clark, Kerry, and Dean are pushing a totally back-assward response to 9/11 that would destroy the country if followed." Of course, the ad does not even mention 9/11. It doesn't even specifically identify those calling for "retreat," or make any statements about anyone's love of country. All in all, it's kind of soft, even cerebral, as 30-second political ads go. Osama Horton it's not.

When the ad was first unveiled last week, I watched Donna Brazile on CNN move in the space of one sentence from bemoaning the supposedly unfair attack to noting that the Bush excerpts came from a speech "proved to be a pack of lies." Ms. Brazile must have been thinking of the Summer talking point that falsely accused Bush of lying about the supposed Iraq-Niger uranium connection. Recycling this old Bush-lied lie was not enough for her: She chose to compound it. Since then, up to today's political shows, Democratic leaders, candidates and consultants have all been offering variations on the same theme. Someone, somewhere in the Democrat braintrust seems to have decided that counterattack, rather than active defense of Democratic policy alternatives, was the way to go. They don't seem to mind that this unanimous response amounts to the entire party standing up, raising their hands, and shouting, "It's us! We're the ones in favor of retreat and putting our national security in the hands of others! All of us!"

What the Democrats otherwise ALL seem to be saying is that it's okay - totally peachy and anyone who disagrees is squelching free speech - for them to accuse Bush & Co. of wasting lives in Iraq through incompetence and corruption, of intentionally letting Osama go free, of lying over and over again on matters of the highest life-and-death importance, of destroying the Constitution, of, as Clark would have it especially, committing the greatest strategic blunder since Napoleon marched on Russia (if not since Alcibiades went after Syracuse), and on and on and on day after day after day - but that any response at all, even if it's just a few generalizations describing the Bush strategy, excerpts from widely seen speeches, and suggestions that those who disagree might be WRONG in a way that might MATTER, goes beyond the bounds of acceptable political discourse.

Yeah, that sure sounds fair!

What the Democrats are really afraid of is that Bush has not yet begun to fight, and, even more, that he may not have to fight very hard. They know that they are on the wrong side of contemporary history, that what Marxists might call the "political conjuncture" simply does not favor them: Bush is heading into '04 with the incumbent advantage, the united party advantage, the recovering economy advantage, the in-party during wartime advantage, and the traditional Republican financial advantage. Much could of course change between now and November of next year, but these factors as well as long-developing social, economic, and demographic trends suggest at least the possibility of an historical re-alignment that puts the Democrats in long-term minority status, if it doesn't sooner or later send them the way of the Whigs.

If they were just a little bit more grown-up, intelligent, credible, or honorable in their apparent desperation, it would be easier to forgive and even feel sorry for them.

Case Continued

The Department of Defense has responded to Stephen Hayes' "Case Closed" story on links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Some Bush critics have been trying to spin the DoD's release as a denial, but, if the leaked memo had seemed to blow open some DoD scandal, equivalent language would have amounted to one of those famous "non-denial denials." As Josh Chafetz at OxBlog has pointed out, the release appears "very carefully crafted so as to avoid contradicting any claims that Hayes actually made." Indeed, all it really indicates is what Hayes himself notes with some impatience and perplexity: That for some reason the Bush Administration has not wanted to engage on this issue.

There are several reasons why this last might be so. Investigation, interrogation, and exploitation of this and related intelligence are still ongoing, and the administration is focused elsewhere. As for political purposes, if opinion polls can be trusted, the populace in general does not especially need to be persuaded that there are or were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. If Bush and co. wanted to launch a propaganda counter-counteroffensive, or, as others have put forward as motivation for the leak, blow Howard Dean or Jay Rockefeller or Carl Levin or even Al Gore out of the water on this issue, they wouldn't leak the info to a conservative weekly, they'd go elsewhere - direct to the Post or NYT if they really wanted to work through leaks.

There's still every reason to believe that Bush and his team like Nurse Ratchet as the Democratic frontrunner, and are comfortable with seeing the Democrats overcommitted to the left on the War on Terror. For the present, the memo should remind wobbly supporters that there is a lot of ammunition stored up for when the real fight commences: In the unlikely event that the Democrats ever gain traction on their actually rather ludicrous claim of no links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, then Bush will be ready to respond.

Re-Thinking Iraq: Saddam and the WMDs

Paul Craddick has now added a fourth part to the"Rethinking Iraq" series in which he's been reviewing diverse controversies - subjects of heated discussion especially over the Summer - associated with the war in Iraq. The latest entry concerns WMDs and the familiar arguments put forward by war opponents that the failure to turn up large WMD stockpiles exposes the entirety of the Bush Administration's case for war as false, even criminal. After examining the evidence, Paul reaches the following conclusion:

In light of the preponderance of informed opinion which before the war held that Iraq had not disarmed (entailing both infrastructure and extant weapons), and in light of the fact that infrastructural elements are now coming to light, it seems to me that it is still eminently reasonable to assume that Iraq did indeed have stockpiles of WMD which have so far eluded us – either through being hidden/moved, or destroyed. In any event, nothing yet has emerged – by a longshot – to establish that the war was/is fraudulent on its own terms.

Of course, many of us, including Paul, have argued further that there were multiple justifications for the war, of which the possible existence of deliverable WMDs in Iraq was merely the most frightening, but very few observers, it seems to me, have come up with reasonable responses to certain obvious questions. Paul's conclusions do not rest on any definitive answers to the WMD mysteries, but I have long thought (much of this post was in fact written several months ago) that the questions can be answered reasonably, even if we assume for sake of argument that the state of evidence never progresses far beyond what we currently possess.

1) If Saddam did not possess a WMD capability, why didn't he comply fully with UN inspections resolutions, and thus avoid war?

Even if Saddam had had all or most of his WMDs and WMD equipment destroyed, there are several reasons why he wouldn't want to comply with inspections: The aim of the inspections was not to discover hidden WMDs; the aim was to verify full disarmament or declare non-compliance with disarmament requirements. As Hans Blix himself confirmed, Iraq never offered more than isolated, piecemeal cooperation on matters of substance, and instead focused on stringing the inspectors along by offering superficial procedural cooperation.

Total cooperation would have required, among other things, full access to all elements of Iraq's WMD programs, including technicians and scientists, and all dual use equipment, alongside a full accounting. Saddam never came close to providing this. To do so would have exposed and confirmed his past deceptions - both known ones and new ones - and would have inevitably have added impetus to ever more intrusive and comprehensive efforts.

The end result would have been either real, complete disarmament, including the eradication of Saddam's ability ever to reconstitute the program, or confrontation. Saddam was unwilling to allow the former to occur, and instead hoped to delay and manage the latter - as he had successfully done in the past. Additionally, maintaining uncertainty about his WMD capacities served purposes of its own in managing external and internal threats, and refusing to give in on this (or virtually any) issue served his image as "the one who doesn't back down," which was fundamental to his political effectiveness and aspirations.

2) If Saddam possessed a WMD capability, why didn't he use it?

At no point did Saddam have any reason to believe that what WMD capacity he preserved would be of high military utility on the battlefield. WMDs of the type Saddam possessed even at the height of his military power are difficult to use effectively against a well-prepared, highly mobile force. Additionally, the moment that a single WMD was used, or even discovered in a position where it could be used, his political strategy - which became even more important once hostilities had actually begun - would have collapsed. (Even France had stated publically that WMD use would cause it to reverse its opposition to the war.)

Nor is there any reason to believe that this political strategy was ever abandoned, up to and including the US invasion, and even the present day. To us, Saddam's defeat seemed inevitable, but it may not have seemed that way to Saddam. Even at this late date, we have no reason to believe that Saddam has admitted defeat. Both he and the Iraqi people - including WMD scientists and WMD program officials - may still believe that a Baathist insurgency and other difficulties of occupation may sooner or later force a US withdrawal, and provide him (or his allies) with a chance to re-gain authority - if not over the entire country in the near term, then at least over a secure base of operations. He may even believe that he's re-gained momentum.

As for the WMDs themselves, I still tend to suspect that there are WMD materials and possibly even some real WMDs somewhere in Iraq, and that some items may have been successfully moved out of the country, but that the old WMD artillery shells and the like were probably destroyed or discarded, and that any quantities of precursor chem/bio materials are probably much smaller now than when originally observed by the UN. As has frequently been pointed out by David Kay and others, it's also worth keeping in mind that even x-thousand liters of one or another toxin requires only a few tens of barrels for storage, and that a much, much smaller amount is sufficient for re-starting the manufacturing process over again, especially if the "intellectual capacity" has been preserved.

Saddam knew this last point well. He was much smarter and more knowledgeable about and more experienced with WMDs - how they're made and how they're used militarily and politically - than, say, most Bush Administration opponents, and, it's fair to say, probably than a lot of Bush Administration operatives and allies as well.

Nurse Ratchet for President

I still find it hard to believe that Dr. Dean is the Dems' frontrunner. It's one of the strongest pieces of evidence - along with recent election results and declining voter identification - that the Democrats are making a bid for long-term minor league status. The frequent comparison to George McGovern is deeply unfair to McGovern, who, for all of his faults, was a man of substance and long service to his country when he ran for President in '72. He also was a helluva lot more congenial than the doctor.

Last week, Dean had one of his typical not-ready-for-the-Big-Show moments on CNN while being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer. Professor Dauber was also watching, and has already pointed out that Dean got the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Ansar al Islam confused with a very different group, the Mujahadeen al Khalq (anti-Iranian Marxist-Islamists who are so weird that even the French cracked down on them). What was typical about the rookie error was not only that it reflected Dean's lack of familiarity with the subject matter, but that it came in the context of a stubborn refusal to back down on a prior claim that Al Qaeda had "no" presence in Iraq prior to the war. Blitzer then brought forth part of the growing body of evidence that Saddam's links to Al Qaeda were in fact quite extensive prior to the war, focusing on long-standing Administration claims. As usual, Dean refused to give an inch, or even a millimeter: He seems to believe that conceding any evidence of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-associated groups would be too much for his larger argument to stand (he may be right).

I felt while watching that Blitzer knew Dean was blowing it, but decided not to go in for the kill. Maybe he didn't want to appear argumentative. Maybe he thought he had already been argumentative enough in challenging Dean on the prior assertion. Still, whatever the explanation, it was disappointing, but it's business as usual at the new, touchy-feely CNN. I never thought I'd miss Bernie Shaw.

As for Dean, it's not just that he's so often wrong, but that he's so insistently, abrasively, condescendingly self-assured about it. To switch metaphors away from baseball, as a character type he seems to be the kind of doctor that the movies and TV have always hated - the egotistical surgeon unwilling to consider an alternative to a scheduled operation, the set-in-his-ways GP insisting on a fatal misdiagnosis. You'd think that at least the Hollywood Left would notice that their standard-bearer gazes down at those who disagree with him in the manner of "Rocket" Romano or Nurse Ratchet, but they just don't seem to recognize the bad guy when he's one of their own.

North Africa Shields Its Head

Collin May at Innocents Abroad has begun what promises to be a fascinating series on the decline of France as understood by the French themselves: France Falling - According to the French (link to blog; permalink dysfunctional). Here's his summary of the current situation:

French thinkers, from a variety of backgrounds and persuasions, have begun a discussion, not so much about American imperialism or the situation in Iraq, but about the state of the French soul. From across the political spectrum – liberals, conservatives, Trotskyites, communists, socialists and the far-right – the argument is being made that in all domains, France is collapsing. Economically stagnant, socially divided, politically paralyzed, militarily enfeebled and diplomatically isolated – this, according to numerous French thinkers, is the plight of contemporary France. Some have gone so far as to suggest that France is turning into something of a democratic pariah among advanced western democracies.

He intends to focus each week on a different notable French author, and finally to provide some of his own reflections.

I've been looking forward to May's further work on such themes since his "Europe, Anti-Europe" post last April, which provides a useful background for those trying to understand how European anti-Americanism functions and what purposes it serves.

4. Colonialism without colonies

Looking to the future, the new global Mandarins expect to include many Arab, African, and Asian members among their ranks. For generations now, the European bureaucrats have been cultivating international cadres - all those dependable votes at the UN. Particular issues - Israel and the Palestinians, interpretations of international law, and so on - may serve first as pretexts for advancement of the transnationalists' institutional interests, but the Europeans and their allies also justify their project as a long-term effort not so much to civilize the non-European world as to sterilize it - in the sense of rendering it safe. Imbued with ecologism, they see themselves as working not to improve but to save the globe. Once sufficiently trained in the arts of regulation and stultification, the new transglobal aristo-bureaucracy would tame or at least restrain technology and industrialization, elsewhere distributing aid especially when it reinforces dependency, and declaring, as needed, the occasional sacrifice or quarantine zone. Losses and setbacks are to be expected, if not quite encouraged, and are rarely to be actively opposed: For the tranzis, acts of terrorism - even so-called "mega-terror," or for that matter the occasional genocide - do not weigh terribly much in the grand balance. Anything short of global nuclear war - and possibly even that - can be discounted, and then administered.

3. The new aristocracy

The Europeans have re-created their historical aristocratic class in the form of the new transnational bureaucracy that extends across and exchanges personnel among the United Nations, the European Union, various political parties, and a host of non-governmental aid and issues organizations. The "tranzis" may see themselves as virtually immune to economic and political disaster: Indeed, disaster is one of their specialties. Thus, even if Europe's economy deteriorates severely under centrally imposed stagnation and mismanagement, there will still be a need for the tranzis to administer and divide enlightenment Europe's last effects. For the present, fear, hatred, and ignorance serve their traditional roles in controlling and motivating the masses. In the future, sheer dependency may suffice. Peripheral Europe - where the tranzi influence is weakest and the US is the counterweight rather than the counterweighed - would possibly be allowed to experiment with a range of alternatives, from American-style democratic capitalism to neo-communism to brute anarchy.

2. European interests in the war on terror

Even as the Europeans are being asked to re-define themselves, they are also being forced to deal with the onset of the War on Terror. Fear and disorientation are already natural responses to events such as the 9/11 attacks, and more generally to the outbreak of any war, and the Europeans in addition must realize that they are ill-prepared to fight on their own, and highly vulnerable if the struggle escalates. At first, they and the Americans reflexively sought each other out, invoking the common self-defense provisions of the NATO charter and loudly proclaiming their unity in the struggle. Two years later, the Europeans seem hardly willing collectively to hold America's coat for the fight, and those who take to the streets in protest against US policy may be hoping that the Islamists have noticed, even while America chooses to look away. Whether such a calculation is anything more than wishful thinking - whether it might reduce, even if only marginally, the risk of 9/11-like outrages taking place in Europe - is impossible to say. Over the long run, however, this tactic may leave the Europeans even more exposed, especially if America finds its economic and other interests better served elsewhere, and chooses to remember who its friends were and weren't when it mattered.

1. Anti-Americanism as surrogate nationalism

Anti-Americanism has a long history in Europe, but some relatively recent events have made it inescapable - not just as, in Nelson Ascher's words, a "wild, open, and hysterical" annoyance, but as a central problem in international relations and US policy.

The uncertain transition to an EU super-state puts European identities in play. Anti-Americanism becomes a classic rallying point suitable for manipulation by political opportunists, and works as a surrogate nationalism on two levels - providing negative content in the absence of a positive European identity, and at the same time offering a vehicle for emotions formerly invested in separate national identities. It's not that the French are no longer French, the Germans no longer German, and so on, only that they are being asked to be much less so, revising and to a large extent reversing a project that dominated European politics and culture for several centuries. To the new old question "who are we," the one easy and obvious answer is "not American." (Also, it seems: "Not Jewish.")

The Divergence

Inspired by some discussion at Europundits - click on "nadas" underneath Nelson Ascher's latest essay - I intend to begin blogging some notes on the widening divergence of American and European interests, a subject matter that inevitably touches as well on the Islamists, the international Left, and pretty much the whole thing.

Needless to say, it's a huge subject. Rather than try, at this time, to address it comprehensively, I'll attack it in pieces, beginning today with a series of raw comments originally posted as responses to Ascher's essay and to the discussion it engendered. I intend to revise, expand upon, and possibly re-organize the posts over time, and will allow them first to appear as rough drafts. Questions, disagreements, and suggestions will be welcome - either in the comment section or by e-mail.

Oliver Kamm: John Pilger, literary critic

"...when writers take a stand on international politics the intensity of their indignation is almost always inversely related to the intelligence with which they express it."

Already Over

I don't know of anyone who's thinking much further ahead than Wretchard at The Belmont Club. In the latest of a series of posts in which he's been reading between the lines and into the silences, attending to the broad correlation of economic, political, and military forces, and recalling historical precedents of much more direct relevance than the more frequently invoked Vietnam and World War II, he argues that the fight against the Iraqi insurgents has for all intents and purposes already been won - that the Sunni resistance reached its critical point of futility some time ago. In his view, the psychological futility point may still be a ways off, but the only thing that the Sunnis currently achieve by fighting is to dig themselves more deeply into the mass grave of their former privileges:

By destroying infrastructure in the Baghdad area, retarding their own reconstruction and generally raising hell, the Sunnis are ironically assuring the permanence of the Kurdish and Shi'ite ascendancy in Iraq. They are resource poor, in the minority and worst of all, clueless. In hankering after lost glories, they are cutting themselves out of the loop, out of power and out of the future. But the psychological futility point will be reached only much later, almost imperceptibly, when the Sunnis are jolted into reality by a signal event[...] long after their army has lost the field. Then it will hit with a vengeance.

Better late than never, but better earlier than later: If these communities struck on their own against the insurgents, perhaps if the former merely did a better job of isolating the latter and withdrawing support, the world and their fellow Iraqis might still welcome them back like so many prodigal delinquents, but it's also possible that, to paraphrase Golda Meir, we may soon find it easier to forgive them for what they've done to us than for what they will have made us do to them.

The US response to the recent downing of helicopters and other provocations is said to focus on "precision raids," but it has also already included a major 4th Infantry Division operation, dubbed Ivy Cyclone, that for the first time since major combat concluded has deployed air support from fighter-bombers. In the expectation of such escalation, and more, David Warren (whose views on all matters seem to have become more pessimistic since his conversion from Anglican to Catholic) takes the hard line:

In practice, [the only remaining option] means dramatically increasing the cost of harbouring Saddamite and Islamist terrorists, or of espousing their cause. It means reversing the policy of treating the inhabitants of such towns as Fallujah and Tikrit, and such neighbourhoods as Saddam Hussein once favoured in Baghdad, as "innocent bystanders". Many have sided with the enemy, and the rest are intimidated into doing so. To change this situation, the power of intimidation must be reversed. The U.S. must show that it would rather sacrifice Fallujah and Tikrit, than sacrifice all of Iraq.

This prospect carries with it what Warren sees as the last remaining threat to the mission:

Yet my biggest doubt about American resolve, over the longer term, is not whether they have the stomach to absorb U.S. casualties, but rather the stomach to do the horrific things necessary to win. They lost Vietnam, after all, from their refusal to utterly destroy the enemy.

Is there any purpose in trying to communicate these themes to the residents of Tikrit and Fallujah in so many words, or can only missiles and bullets speak clearly enough? In either case, we may yet save ourselves and our enemy from the worst. If Wretchard is correct, then perhaps it's now only a matter of finally reaching the losers, like the British at the Battle of New Orleans, with the news that their war is over.