Conservatives Anonymous

2008-05-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

I have returned to the States, probably not to the blog

I just returned after seven or so months in Iraq (just under eleven months of total mobilization time), where we fared no worse than a decent firefight and a small IED. I am not really inclined to return to politics right now as I am rather cynical. I like Bush but with reservations; I like McCain personally with few reservations and politically with plenty of 'em. Obama strikes me as Jimmy Carter part deux, a well-meaning and intelligent man unprepared for the challenges he will almost certainly face. Hillary, for what its worth, may be a pragmatist but she is not nearly as savvy as she is thought to be and in truth an Obama White House may be marginally less threatening. Perhaps something will annoy me or inspire me enough to warrant comment, but until/unless that happens this site will likely remain dormant. I thank you for your attention and your patronage and I wish you the best.

2007-09-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

I have toyed with the idea of shutting this down, and I may yet do so. I am deploying to Iraq with the Virginia National Guard and will have neither the ability nor the desire to keep up even my meager posting pace. I will leave this up though, comment if you wish or just peruse past posts and perhaps I will begin this again when I return.

2007-04-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

We Are All Hokies

One day removed from this tragedy, so much remains unanswered. There are anecdotes suggesting that the shooter was unstable and a loner, but that description fits a substantial portion of undergraduates. Perhaps jilted romance was the motive, but even a crime of passion is unlikely to claim dozens of lives. Some have tried to say that the willful nature of this renders it beneath the term "tragedy." I disagree. Terrorism, which seeks to kill innocents for political purpose, can be described as a crime, as can the infliction of death where greed is motive. This was violence for no apparent motive and with no enumerated goal in mind. I can think of few circumstances for which "tragedy" is a more apt term.

This was indicative of a spiritual sickness, both in the person of the shooter and in similar communities across the country that have born witness to such senseless acts. It was Cho Seung-Hui's tragedy, it was the tragedy of the thirty-two who happened to cross his path yesterday morning and the countless lives personally touched by their loss, so too was it the tragedy of thousands of communities across the country who looked across their campuses, their town squares, their places of business and realized that it could just has easily have been them.

And yet amidst the despair and the senselessness, so too did we bear witness to acts of great heroism. Liviu Librescu sacrificed his life to help several of his students escape and became the first of what will probably be several tales of heroism to emerge. And across the state, on campuses where "Tech Sucks" paraphernalia was on back order prior to April 16th, thousands-strong crowds stood vigil to share their thoughts and prayers with their Hokie brethren. Even as half-wits the world over rushed to pass judgment and levy blame, our political leadership has been thankfully above the fray, acknowledging that grieving comes first and recrimations a distant, distant second.

If something positive is to emerge from this, hopefully it will be the realization that we are all God's children, and that a warped, well-armed nihilist can destroy lives but he cannot destroy the sense of camaraderie and community that trumps silly football rivalries, post-adolescent awkwardness, and the pulls of a material world. In death may Cho find the peace he never found in life, and may those he sought to take with him into the hereafter be welcomed into God's kingdom with open arms. May those left behind find some small solace in knowing that a campus, a state, and a country grieve with them. And may we find the strength to embrace the awkward and the marginalized among us, so that their temporary sense of alienation never grows so strong as to recommend so cruel and heartless a farewell gesture.

2007-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

The Crisis Through Muslim Eyes

It is mildly ironic that the side of the political spectrum so fond of deriding its opponents for cultural insensitivity steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that the Muslim world might perceive the events of the last several years through a completely different prism. A punditry that cannot remember back to the winter of '02-'03 cannot fathom how a people with considerably lower literacy rates and education levels than our own can contextualize events over millennia.

To do so would be to acknowledge that at its sixtieth birthday, at roughly the same age as Israel is today, the Crusader Kingdom probably thought itself pretty secure in Jerusalem. It's fall a mere three decades later at the hands of its much more populous neighbors would reinforce the insight that Israel is not a lumbering giant assailing the weak and powerless people that surround it but rather an imperiled state that will face for many decades to come an existential threat that is growing, not diminishing, and it should be permitted to act accordingly.

To do so would be to acknowledge as well that a retreat from Baghdad would be coupled onto a list that stretches probably 550 years of the decadent West retreating in the face of Muslim aggression. It would join Jerusalem circa 1187, Kosovo Polje, Constantinople circa 1453, White Mountain, Kabul circa 1842, Gallipolli, Algieria, Beirut, Mogadishu and Kabul circa 1989. To our eyes such a coherent whole cannot be rationalized with adding in ignominious defeats for Islam, but to an ill-educated populace for whom religious jurists and print media propagandists suffuse such messages with religious themes it makes all the sense in the world. For alongside that narrative can run another about the West's conspiracy against Islam and the victimhood of the Muslim world, running from the Crusades to Andalusia in the fifteenth century to Sevres and the ouster of Mossadeq in 1953.

There is little we as Westerners respect more than human life, particularly our own human life. In an era of biomedical advances and limited warfare, life is enduring and comfortable. The decline or at least marginalization of religion for many has removed the prospect of the hereafter as a palliative for suffering and premature death in this life (though one could argue that the increasing comfort of our lives has helped to render religion unnecessary for many). Contrast that with the Muslim world, particularly the Arab world, where booming populations, poor economic fortunes and internecine strife have limited the provisioning of comfort to the masses. In the hereafter, trained engineers do not drive taxis or face strip-searches at Israeli checkpoints, affronts that are blamed by virtually everyone of religious, social or temporal authority on Israel and/or the West. Islam, both as a faith and as an identity, is triumphant. In short, life is cheap because the distance between the heavenly promise and the worldly present is so great that people are willing to dispense with the latter to achieve the former.

For much of Iran, an educated and relatively comfortable society, this is not the case. Religion is seen as an impediment to the achievement of economic prosperity and temporal pleasure. Ahmadinejad is not speaking to these people, however. He appeals instead to those who sent their children to war with plastic keys around their necks, those frustrated youths who have chosen to blame the West for their limited opportunities rather than their own meager talents or a clerical elite that has alienated itself from the world in service of a narrow and theologically questionable interpretation of Shia Islam. More important than this, he appeals to the Shia and Sunni masses in the Arab world who, while skeptical of Persian ascendance, delight in seeing the all-powerful Britain (in public imagination over the last century an equal or greater menace than the U.S.) brought to heel by a Muslim power.

The hostage crisis highlighted to the Western public but also to the Muslim world the value that we place on the lives of our citizens, indeed our soldiers, and the sacrifices we are willing to make to preserve them. The groveling and contrition of the captives, while perhaps understandable in context, will be broadcast and rebroadcast throughout the Muslim world as a reminder that we are not invincible and that we will retreat before we accept casualties. Those who aim with seriousness to "out-breed" their opponents and to convey to their children the glories of martyrdom will not easily disavow these notions, no matter how many American bullets fell pajama-clad warriors.

Until we learn to view ourselves through the eyes of our enemies, we will continue to abide by the paradigm of domestic political considerations rather than that of the Arab street, which respects force and the willingness to use it, eschews the appearance of weakness in all its manifestations. Nancy Pelosi's diplomatic missteps, the image of smiling, waving, apologetic British sailors...these are very serious setbacks for our progress in the region. If multiculturalism can bestow upon us any tangible benefit, it ought to be the ability, at minimum the willingness, to understand how we are perceived by our enemies. Perchance...

2007-04-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Iranian Hostage Crisis, Part II

I sincerely doubt that my meager contributions will add materially to what has been said elsewhere, but I've been away for two weeks and I haven't read what others had to say on the subject so it's new to me. For intellectual and personal reasons a good bit of my youthful bellicosity has eroded, and I have little desire to see a full-scale war against the Islamic Republic. That said, a "diplomatic solution" to this that involves anything more involved that an Iranian capitulation will be a disaster. Even a half-hearted apology, much less any substantive step such as a hostage release or a delay or withdrawal of pending sanctions, will be a major domestic and international coup for the Iranians.

Let's get something straight from the beginning. Even if one accepts Tehran's rather dubious claim that they were in Iranian waters (the Shatt-al-Arab has long been disputed) and ignores the improbability that this was something more sinister than an accident (these men and women hardly seem candidates for a clandestine mission), Iran is flaunting the Geneva Convention by parading them on television and coercing confessions out of them. Their conduct is reprehensible and its reward by a verbal apology or substantive conduct to that end would undermine three years of efforts aimed at their isolation.

During the 1980's, the Reagan Administration was willing to exchange arms for Western hostages seized in Beirut. This did not effect a thaw in relations between Tehran and Washington; rather it inspired the Iranians to encourage their Lebanese proxies to seize more hostages. By rewarding Iranian misbehavior London will reinforce the presumption (an accurate one at that) in Tehran and the capitols of other rogue states that when given a choice between appeasement and retaliation the West will opt for the former in all but the most egregious instances.

The optimal outcome to this would be an Entebbe-style rescue that sees the SAS and their American counterparts rescue the hostages and deal a harsh rebuke to Tehran. In the wake of Entebbe and Desert One, however, (thanks Jimmy!) the Iranians are probably keeping the hostages well-hidden and separated, so even if such an action were possible the potential for disaster is high. Still, the stakes in this are simply too high for Britain to cave in.

2007-03-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

The Demise of the UVM College Republicans

What began five years ago as a tiny cabal and ultimately mushroomed into a successful, hundred-strong organization met its ignominious end last Tuesday in the hallowed halls of the UVM Student Government Association, when the SGA opted to derecognize the UVM CRs for failure to repay an eighteen month old debt. The charge was legitimate; the club borrowed heavily to finance the visit of Newt Gingrich in Fall 2005 and had been unable to make any substantial headway in repaying the $7000 debt. Still, the SGA has a long history of rescuing troubled student organizations, including a bailout of the Cynic, the school's disaster of a student newspaper, and the International Socialist Organization, who managed to get an SGA van impounded at Fort Benning. Their failure to act in this case, coupled with their zeal in delivering the final nail in the coffin, suggests that antipathy to the Republicans' cause was a motivating factor. Still, the blame lies with myopic students who ran up a tab that they had no foreseeable means of paying down.

It is a sad end for an organization that was a labor of love for a number of students, one that provided a valuable service to the UVM community by attracting notable speakers at a time when the likes of Howard Zinn and Ward Churchill were the most accomplished that the school could muster. To its members and to the wider student body the organization introduced basic tenets of conservative thought, a viewpoint long lacking in and out of the classroom. It fostered intellectual development, provided support, and connected present students to alumni in various walks of life. Those who dedicated themselves to making as successful and enduring as it was deserve credit for doing so, and those who squandered the gift of a populous and accomplished organization deserve disapprobation. Also deserving of jeers are the petty minions of the SGA who seized an opportunity to squash the only serious challenge to ideological orthodoxy.

2007-03-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

Abortion in the Modern Era

To preface this, I saw the movie Amazing Grace this weekend and was struck by some of the similarities between the two conflicts. I am not suggesting that the ragtag bunch of pro-lifers, ranging from fanatical to lukewarm in sympathy, constitute a new batch of John Browns and Harriet Beecher Stowes; I am neither that presumptuous nor that wedded to the illustrative analogy. Still, I thought it worth sounding out.

The monkey wrench in this analogy is the notion that slavery was morally and economically anachronistic in the 1800's while so-called reproductive freedoms are thought to be progressive, economically, politically and even in some corners morally. This is where I seek to be contrarian. There is nothing progressive about abortion. It has existed in various forms for thousands upon thousands of years. Histories of the classical era suggest that abortion and even infanticide (exposure) were not uncommon in Greek or Roman civilization. Though the procedure often has or had an accompanying stigma, tacit acceptance existed across political, geographic and religious divides. The only thing novel about the contemporary practice is that it possesses legal sanction.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw the ebbing of ethical justifications for slavery. The existence in the midst of white society of educated, eloquent free blacks and former slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano helped to dispel ideas about inferiority that had helped slave societies reconcile their notions about liberty with the servitude of individuals. In many ways, these individuals were inconvenient truths. Abolitionist sentiment was fueled in part by the ebbing of economic justifications for slavery in the North; while the cotton gin made slavery somewhat more profitable in the South the mercantile and small-scale farming economy of the North had little use for individuals with little incentive to work who had to be fed, clothed and housed.

I posit that the same arguments can now be made against abortion. The ethical doublespeak that must take place to justify abortion founders as science perfects imaging techniques that dispel the "clump of cells" notion about developing fetuses, as we understand better how unique and miraculous even the youngest lives are, and most importantly as the date of viability is pushed ever backward. The odds of survival that once applied to a twenty-five week old can now be said to apply to a twenty week old.

Economic arguments are similarly wanting. The proliferation of day-care agencies to accommodate working women and even women in college, the availability of WIC to provide free and nutritious food to pregnant women, and the abundance of willing and eager homes waiting to adopt healthy babiesall suggest that it has never before been easier to carry babies to term. Even the stigma that used to attach itself to illegitimacy has been diluted in most of the communities where abortion is most prevalent.

As a final point, I would suggest that never before has pregnancy been so easy to prevent. There are literally countless contraceptive options, many of which are available at deep discounts or free of charge from school or community programs. Even dispensing with that old chestnut abstinence, there are few excuses save lapses in judgment and in memory for becoming pregnant. Thus abortion can be seen not as a necessary evil but rather for what it really is, a choice, a luxury even, to which the alternatives both before and after conception are myriad.

I still have some strong reservations about the issue. I cannot in good conscience ask, much less demand, that someone who did not consent to sex in the first place carry her baby to term. Nor can I ask that a mother bring to term a baby whose birth is likely to kill mother and/or child. But few on either side of the debate claim that these cases constitute the rule rather than simply the exceptions to it.

The day will probably never come when abortion is thought of with the same universal contempt that characterizes our present approach to slavery. But with these points in mind perhaps the fence-sitters and the lukewarm among us can begin to see that abortion is not progress, it is not the wave of the future. Rather it is an anachronistic edifice for which the ethical and empirical foundations are being eroded each and every day. Perhaps it is escapist or even morally cowardly to merely hope that a favorable Supreme Court decision and the march of aforementioned scientific, economic and ethical progress will help it to die a slow death. I don't doubt that a handful of fire-eaters and sociological naifs will step forward to defend it, but hopefully the expiation of this great travesty will not be as gut-wrenching and divisive as its predecessor.

2007-03-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

I took a little while off, in part because I wasn't getting a ton of feedback and consequently thought it unworth the effort. Turns out I had several comments, I just didn't know I had to moderate them. Granted, most of them were ads for male enhancement pills, but feedback is feedback.

2006-09-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Two Thoughts

First, those trying to simplify the President's case for clarifying the Geneva Conventions into merely right or wrong are missing a great deal of nuance. If roughing people up prevents a mushroom cloud from wafting over a major US city, its tough to argue against it. At the same time, there is a prestige issue highlighted so well by Colin Powell. Unless we fight a conventional war against a state actor this is unlikely to boomerang on our troops; see how much success you have asking Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker what the insurgents do to Americans they capture. Nor is this likely to doom us in an Arab world that already believes us guilty of everything this measure permits and most of what it outlaws. But to the rest of the world, it is a frontal assault on international law and multilateralism. No matter how useless a conservative might deem these two concepts, paeans to them are precursors to any serious attempt at attracting military and diplomatic allies. Absent a reasonable belief that a pending large-scale attack can be prevented through aggressive interrogation techniques (and if that belief exists I should hope most interrogators would do what was necessary and take the consequences) the benefits of this measure would seem to be dwarfed by its costs. The only good that seems to be arising from this is the appearance of Congressional independence that might help GOP candidates avoid being tarred by association with an unpopular president.

Second, how stupid, how peurile, how infantile must one be to demonstrate against someone who calls you intolerant by displaying violence and intolerance? This latest row, not unlike the cartoon controversy of the past year, evidences the pathetic, infantile, abjectly stupid political culture that dominates most of the Muslim world at present. That secular and religious leadership can quite literally call out a mob to demonstrate over something a fraction as offensive as the rhetoric that eminates from mosques during Friday prayers speaks to the colossal nature of our challenge. Until we can convince a region of sheep that they cannot evidence intolerance and respond to someone who labels it as such by emphatically restating it in violent form, democracy is a pipe dream. How can you say Pope Benedict was wrong to say what he did when literally millions of people take to the streets to act out the very point they allege he made?

2006-09-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

I do not have anything particularly profound to say. I simply wanted to express my disdain at the arrogance of those individuals so sodden with efficacy as to dream that their thoughts on this tragedy evidence the requisite profundity to touch souls and to change minds. So too am I outraged at those who wish to recast the deaths of these thousands as arrows, mere weapons to be slung at political opponents. The facts of this crime speak for themselves. The deaths of three thousand people were effected in mere seconds by individuals who would gleefully have taken the lives of ten, one hundred, one thousand times as many as they did. Thousands were made widows, widowers, and orphans. Remember. Commemorate. Pray, if that is your persuasion. There are three hundred sixty four tomorrows to avenge or to excuse.

2006-08-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Adieu (sorta)

I apologize for my lengthy absence. I just started grad school this past week and have been running around for a month getting in shape for it. I've been a little less inclined to blog recently as I am coming to realize that I lack the requisite shock value to attract much of an audience and will not stoop to demagoguery to gain one. I'll leave this up and update it on occasion, but I will probably be more apt to post to NER when the mood strikes me or pen something for Red State. I thank my few loyal linkers and readers for their time and attention over the past two and a half years.

2006-07-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Palestinization of Iraq

If the American effort in Iraq is ultimately unsuccessful, the postmortem will undoubtedly blame George Bush's naivete and the sinister machinations of the neoconservatives. While no doubt the Administration's policy planners deserve some of this, I would credit instead the efforts of the Arab elite to undermine this venture at every turn. Iraq has become what Palestine has long been and what Lebanon seemed to finally break free of in 2005. It is a cynical ploy perpetrated by and on behalf of the Arab political and religious elite, a lamb sacrificed on the altar of the status quo.

The people of Iraq, even the Sunnis, will benefit from peace and stability, above and beyond the obvious plus of not having to dodge bombs and sectarian mobs. Even if the oil wealth is not split evenly across society, and even if the Shia and the Kurds come to dominate the government, the return of well-educated expatriates and risk-averse investment will almost certainly turn Baghdad into the region's preeminent city. After Cairo there is no other comparable Arab metropolis, and Najaf and Karbala make eastern Iraq the religious and theological hub of the Shia community. A democratic Iraq would probably attract the dissidents from the other Arab states, creating in Baghdad an oasis of free thought similar to Ras Beirut pre-1975. Thus it is all but assured that a stable, peaceful Iraq would have superb economic prospects.

Fears of an American beachhead in the Muslim Middle East are self-evidently nonsense,. A democratic Iraq need not be an American client state to act upon our interests; political stability and domestic tranquility (and the corresponding security of the Iraqi oil supply) accomplish virtually everything we would desire from the country.

What, then, is the problem? The best interests of the Iraqi people differ from those of the Arab elite. For a number of reasons, political instability in Iraq is much more beneficial than is tranquility for the temporal and religious rulers of the Muslim Middle East. America (the Crusader/Zionist alliance, in Bin Laden's verbiage) is a much better bogeyman with thousands of her soldiers on the ground in Iraq than she is several thousand miles away. Iraq also serves as a release valve for angry jihadists, the Afghan Arabs (rather the successor generation) that so threaten the monarchies and emirates of the Arab world.

Additionally, Shia and Kurd ascendancy poses significant problems for those who rule over minorities long accustomed to marginalization. A decentralized Iraqi state will foster a semi-autonomous Kurdistan both a haven for and beacon to Turkish and Iranian Kurds. The Shia mullahocracy in Iran was unsettling; indeed it helped awaken the long marginalized Lebanese Shia. Nonetheless, the state's Persian identity rendered it sufficiently alien to limit its effect. A empowered Shia majority in Iraq lacks that ethnic and cultural distance. This is especially worrying for Wahhabists who decry the Shia as idolators and apostates.

Though Iran would seem to desire stability for its Shia brethren in Iraq, they realize that this could be the death knell of their own hold on power. Khomeini's conception of the velayat-e-faqih is at odds with most Shia jurisprudence. A politically quietist approach such as that advocated by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would be uniquely unsettling for the Islamic Republic. Additionally, the clerical schools at Qom and Mashad have anchored the regime's claim to be the center of the Shia world; an emerging alternative at the pilgrimage site of Najaf would instantly rival Qom.

Thus the Iraq of today exists as a violent, lawless cautionary tale, fostered by the dollars and public pronouncements of political and clerical elites throughout the region. It serves as a cold shower for those who consider democracy or even the United States Marine Corps an upgrade over the status quo. It is foment for the conspiracy theories so central to the stultification of Arab political consciousness. This cynicism plays on ancient sectarian bigotry to make the case for the perpetuation of monarchical rule and clerical domination of the educational and religious lives of subject populations and the consequent perpetuation of tyranny and ignorance. In sacrificing the wellbeing of millions to preserve their hold on power, the Arab elite are erecting a new Palestine in Iraq.

2006-07-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

A Voice of Dissent

Allow me to state from the outset that my support for Israel is all but unconditional. I am awed by what the Israelis have wrought from a dusty, misbegotten corner of the Earth and I believe that both as democrats and as foes of Islamic militancy we have common cause. I believe, however, that their attack on Lebanon will effect no end to this violence; it will outrage the Arab world and will probably imperil the independence of Beirut in the process. This is too great a price to bear for a token gesture that will not tackle the 'root causes' of Hezbollah terror, Damascus and Tehran.

The Cedar Revolution has not succeeded in removing all the vestiges of foreign influence in Lebanon, but it has helped Beirut emerge from the shadow of Damascus to birth the freest majority-Muslim state in the region. A people long held hostage to a proxy conflict between stronger states seemed to have finally turned the corner. Problems certainly remain. Syrian influence persists, particularly among the Hezbollah organization they fund, and Beirut's influence in the Bekaa and the southern Jabal Amil is limited. Armed forces appointments are still hostage to the need for sectarian proportionality and thus can play a limited role in providing internal security. It is not that Beirut does not want to disarm Hezbollah, it is that it cannot. The fact that Hezbollah holds seats in parliament is incidental; they are a minority party that sits only because the Sunnis, Druze and Maronites cannot sever ties with their most populous demographic group.

Enter Israel. With Iran's nuclear program about to come before the Security Council, one need not be a cynic to suggest that Hezbollah's cross-border raid came at the behest of its patrons in Tehran. There is certainly precedent for this, namely the practice in the 1980's of kidnapping Westerners to ratchet up the pressure on Washington. This banks on the inevitability of a devastating Israeli response; in this case they hope the spectre of the Jewish State thrashing about like an angry giant may be enough to convince the Arab world (and the European left) that the danger of an Iranian bomb is smaller than that posed by an Israel with no Muslim counterweight.

The problem is that Olmert and his American allies know full well that Beirut does not control, and cannot rein in, Hezbollah. Furthermore, they know that a sustained Israeli presence in Southern Lebanon will all but ensure Syrian and probably Iranian infiltration, thus endangering Lebanese independence and reducing her people once more to cannon fodder for a proxy war. If they succeed in destroying Lebanon's economy, they will but widen the appeal of Hezbollah as the organization, backed by the suddenly bountiful petrodollars of the Iranians, is the sole provisioner of social services for much of the Shia population. Israel and the Bush Administration endorse this because they do not want Israel to be seen as doing nothing. 'Doing something' cannot be a substitute for doing the right thing. In my estimation, it would be better to take little or no action than to take action that risks the freedom of a third party state while doing nothing to address the root causes of this phenomenon.

The sinister hands behind Hezbollah and to a lesser extent Hamas are Damascus and Tehran. In the wake of crushing defeats on the field of battle, Syria has come to accept that the only way in which it can strike Israel without retaliation is to do so through terrorist organizations. Neither Damascus nor Tehran has ever faced meaningful consequences for its support of Hezbollah because to Israel it is less costly in the short term to either accept the casualties or attack the weak governmental organizations responsible for territorial security in the lands from whence the bombers came.

I am not suggesting that Israel needs to march on Damascus or start lobbing missiles at Tehran. Rather I am saying that holding accountable those who evidently lack the ability (though admittedly the Palestinians also lack the desire) to prevent such attacks while allowing their instigators to remain free ensures that they will continue. If Israel lacks the will to move against the Syrians or the Iranians, it should take smaller measures such as striking militant leaders from above or raiding to free its soldiers rather than a blockade or a full-scale invasion. The solutions they opted for instead have the unique distinction of being powerful enough to outrage the Arab world and the European left while weak enough to prevent a real resolution to foreign-funded terror. Israel either needs to accept casualties as the inevitable consequence of its precarious position and thus placate the Arab world (which should go a long way toward facilitating relative unity in the face of the Iranian threat) or it needs to move against those who genuinely threaten it, consequences be damned. Woeful half-measures offer the drawbacks of both and the benefits of neither.

2006-07-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

Deb Frisch and the Demise of Collegiality

A member in good standing of the Angry Left, Deb Frisch, managed to distinguish herself with a lengthy pattern of harrassment directed at blogger Jeff Goldstein, of the popular site Protein Wisdom. Rather than confining her verbal rapier to attacks on Goldstein, she opined that the death of Goldstein's young son (whether he was 'shot' or 'Jon-Benet'ed) would mean nothing to her, accused him of playing the 'Jew card' and, when confronted with the possibility of legal action, told Goldstein to 'bring it on.' These insults, while despicable, would have merited scant attention had not their author been an adjunct professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. In response to the outcry over her statements, Dr. Frisch issued an 'apology' conspicuously free of contrition that characterized the apparent wish that Goldstein's son be raped and murdered as 'over the line of nastiness.' Depending on which line you read, she resigned or lost her job. She will skip back to Eugene, Oregon with a martyrdom story to share with the ideologically sympathetic.

This story seems to me symptomatic of a larger problem. Several decades ago, even centuries ago, college faculties, indeed the intelligentsia as a whole, were hotbeds of intellectual discourse. Professors and other luminaries across national borders and oceans corresponded on the philosophical and scientific questions of the day. Even in the early Twentieth Century, the stodgy professoriate hired Marxists so long as their credentials were in order. It is difficult to imagine an avowed Burkean or a disciple of Friedman being so well received in the faculty lounges across the country these days. While there are some disciplines and faculty lounges where constructive discourse perseveres, I would posit that the reason Dr. Frisch was so angry is that her academic experience, and her online echo chamber, exposes her to little or no difference of opinion. She expressed via email the sort of rage and despicable humor that rarely seeps beyond the closed doors of faculty lounges and other bastions of liberal insularity.

It is a function of the world in which we live that much of the intellectual left has retreated into an armed camp, a self-policing entity as pitiless in treating heretics and apostates (witness the Kossacks' treatment of The New Republic for emphasis) as in assailing the ideologically unenlightened (Protein Wisdom has been shut down for some time now, presumably at the behest of some intrepid lefty IT nerds). This is not to suggest that the intellectual right cannot be guilty of insularity, only that Frisch represents that unhappy wedding of academic and internet echo chambers. Thus a professor who should be helping her students to understanding all points of view is ruthless and borderline criminal in taking aim at people with whom she disagrees. Whither collegiality...

2006-07-06T08:36:00.001-07:00

The White Man's Burden
William Easterly Takes Aim At Development Aid

I just finished William Easterly's castigation of the Western world for the failures of developmental aid programs. Easterley, an economist, rightly savages these programs for their bumbling inefficiency, their pitiful results, and the mushrooming bureaucracy that inevitably accompanies such efforts. He breaks down the numbers that suggest at minimum correlation and probable causation between large-scale development aid and sluggish or nonexistent economic growth. He points out that aid is skewered toward the 'sexy' programs that get First World politicians reelected, eg building new roads and giving antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients, to the detriment of much more cost-effective solutions like maintaining the equipment and infrastructure from past development projects and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. He also points out that many of the most successful initiatives in advancing education and fighting poverty have been partly or completely initiated not by the donor countries but by people from the recipient countries; indeed some of the most successful have been unable to find donors willing to fund expansion.

I agree with Easterly's larger conclusions. He rightly asserts that all the benefit concerts in the world will be for naught if the aid programs they fund are ineffectual or even counterproductive. He is right to emphasize accountability for success among programs and to emphasize pragmatism over sweeping goals that have failed miserably in the past and are almost certain to do so in the future. I agree as well that an emphasis on loans over grants is sowing the seeds of future problems, specifically debt crises and the resulting discord that undermines any goodwill generated by the original gesture.

And yet Easterly's work was itself overly ambitious, overstretching itself in a manner not dissimilar to the aid programs he lampoons. He tried to fit a template of Western incompetence on each and every interaction between the First and the Third Worlds, from Iraq to the Argentinian debt crisis, and attempted to depart from his training as an economist to dabble in history. His creative historiography begets a paradox whereby the West seems to be at fault for much that has gone wrong, be it through imperialism, anti-communism, or decolonization, but the solutions for fixing the problems in the developing countries must come from within. He may be right on the latter count, but the accuracy of the former is dubious at best.

Its flaws notwithstanding, The White Man's Burden is an important cold shower for those imbued with the spirit of Bono and Jeffrey Sachs, those who think that global prosperity or even just The End of Poverty (to purloin the title of the 2005 Sachs book on the subject) is one more Big Push away. It should be required reading for those who sit in cushy chairs on 19th Street in DC or overlooking the East River in Manhattan doling out largesse to peoples they cannot bring themselves to visit, much less comprehend. It's assault on Good Intentions as Foreign Policy, or worse yet the portention of such for electoral gain, is impeccably timed and, if heeded, may save the Third World and the First from another round of wasted billions, donor-funded Swiss chalets for tin-pot dictators, and massive disappointment.

2006-06-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Quest for the Vital Center

The title of this post is culled from an Arthur Schlesinger book of the same name, published in the midst of the postwar liberal identity crisis. In The Good Fight, Peter Beinart attempts to redefine post-9/11 liberalism in much the same fashion. Beinart, editor of the leftish New Republic, has long advocated a liberal internationalism of the sort practiced by George Kennan and George Marshall during the early Cold War and Scoop Jackson and Pat Moynihan at its end. In his book, he spells out a prescription for a liberal order that comprehends the threat posed by terrorism and the necessity of confrontation. His criticisms of the Bush Administration are myriad, but embedded within them is a shared sense of purpose that has been sorely lacking among leftist politicians and pundits in this country.

Beinart lays out a vision of an America that is militarily strong and assertive when necessary but distinguished as well for its generosity and restraint. He advocates foreign aid as a palliative in the Islamic World, by no means a panacea but a method of countering the prevailing winds of poverty and authoritarianism in the region. He advocates an embrace of multilateralism but acknowledges the failures of the United Nations; thus he calls for a greater role for multilateral alliances such as NATO and for NGOs.

To buttress his case Beinart undertakes a decades-long survey of American liberalism, focusing in particular on the critical elections of 1948, 1968 and 1972 while implying that the Democrats are in the midst of a similar crisis of confidence. Rather than give in to the temptation to say as Henry Wallace and Jimmy Carter did that America must be morally pure to act (or the conservative implication that America IS essentially pure), Beinart argues that we are imperfect but cannot fall into the relativistic trap of believing that our impurity should prevent action. In so doing he rejects the 'anti-imperialist' argument that sees the American plutocratic and economic establishments as the ultimate evil, one which need be confronted before that of Osama bin Laden and his progeny.

I agree with Beinart in spirit on many points. While his advocacy of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East seems to ignore the reality that America aided not in the development of Western Europe's industrial and economic capacities but in their REconstruction, he is right to say that foreign aid is public relations on the cheap, as in Indonesia after the tsunami. I think him naive not to realize the difference between disaster relief in Indonesia and Pakistan and developmental assistance to a region many of whose countries are awash with money, but the wider conclusion is a sage one. Similarly, I believe he is somewhat knavish to hold the examples of Kosovo or Somalia as any sort of standard for nation-building, but in emphasizing the need for democratization as a process and a practice rather than merely as an ideology he is not nearly so naive as some of the lesser neo-con minds who believed that Iraqi democracy would effortlessly construct (and fund) itself.

Beinart is right to argue, as Fukuyama does, that sometimes restraint can go as far in advancing American goals as precipitous action. Unilateralism can alienate potential or even longstanding allies, and while sometimes it is necessary the burden should be that much higher when the resolve of the international community is lacking. For instance, Iranian development of nuclear weapons may ultimately necessitate military action, but in giving the appearance of restraint Bush has helped to rejuvenate his ties with his European allies and may ultimately gain acquiescence in if not sanction for the use of force.

There were other aspects to Beinart's work that were problematic. His Cold War narrative seemed to suggest that the liberal hawks and the conservative hawks had contradictory visions of Cold War success when they could better be described as complimentary. He made the traditional leftish paeans to economic equality and progressive taxation, though any devotees of Scoop Jackson will remember that the 'Senator from Boeing' never lost faith in the New Deal.

A slightly more complicated issue for Beinart is his implication that a conservative emphasis on moral clarity excludes any attempt to tackle 'root causes.' I would argue that while it is imperative that a response to a terrorist attack or a hostage-taking appear to reject the terrorists' demands out of hand lest copycats be bred, the root causes are often tackled down the line. For instance, George Bush could never have evacuated the Arabian peninsula in October 2001, but he has quietly drawn down troops in 'the Land of the Two Holy Places' in the years that followed. To declare war on Arab poverty and autocracy would be to grant moral legitimacy to the hijackers, but clearly the invasion of Iraq was aimed at effecting political and economic liberalization. Thus it seems fair to say that for many conservatives there must exist sufficient lag time between the event and an exploration of its underlying causes, lest the perpetrators seem to receive moral reprieve, even moral sanction.

On the aggregate, however, the book was a clarion call for a shared sense of purpose. I believe George Will erred in calling Beinart's book a refutation of Bush's foreign policy; rather I believe that the vision of The Good Fight is complimentary. Clearly the liberal internationalism advanced by Beinart will depart frequently from a Republican foreign policy that still draws heavily on the tenets of neoconservatism, but tactical disagreements pale in comparison to the importance of consensus on the nature and the magnitude of the threat of jihadism. A battle over Beinart's vision of a strong, self-confident liberal internationalism seems to be playing out in Joe Lieberman's primary battle, where the incumbent Senator faces a primary challenge from an opponent whose position would fall into the author's characterization of a liberal anti-imperialist. If Beinart can precipitate a shift in the orientation of self-described liberals, perhaps future votes on military and diplomatic action will be 80-20 and 350-150 instead of 55-45 and 260-240. The parties can debate the best means to confront the evil of jihadism rather than the virtue and necessity of confronting it at all.

2006-06-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Two Faces of Islam

I apologize for my laziness in tending to my ongoing book review. I was stuck in the 600-page quagmire that is Caroline Finkel's Osman's Dream, a lengthy and very dry book about the Ottoman Empire. The subject is important but not terribly bloggable, so I was waiting until I concluded Stephen Schwartz's Two Faces of Islam to put in my next installment.

I was rather unimpressed by the book. The author's criticisms of Wahhabism bordered on the irrational. I do not mean to imply that I think Wahhabism to be benign; far from it. A case can be made that Wahhabism is the preponderate threat eminating from the Islamic world, and certainly the oil-fueled expansion of Saudi-funded madrassas is one of the biggest sources of the growth of extremism. I was instead resentful of Schwartz's attempt to exonerate virtually the whole of Islam for the sins of extremism.

I believe that there is a strain within Islam as a whole that has contributed to the growth of fundamentalism. Whether one wishes to point to the lack of a delineation between the spiritual or the temporal, the abundance of verses in which the Quran chides believers against 'turning the other cheek,' or merely the peculiarities of Islamic history, it hardly seems bigoted to posit that perhaps it is Islam itself rather than merely bastardized interpretations of it that facilitates what the world is dealing with toay. This is not to say that mainstream Islamic sects, be they Sunni, Shia, or Sufi, are averse to peace; far from it. It is instead to point out that extremism and anti-Western animus seem to have evolved in a number of distinct regions in which al-Wahhab hardly seems a fitting scapegoat. To ignore them in the pursuit of simplistic explanations flies in the face of my ideological and historiographical leanings.

Most galling is Schwartz's treatment of Iran, the world's largest state-sponsor of terrorism, as a benign entity. Khomeini comes across as a true Muslim, not a mediocre Shia scholar whose vision of velayat-e-faqih is diametrically opposed to a millennia of Shia teaching. Hezbollah's reign of terror, in Lebanon and elsewhere, merits a scant few lines. Iranian attempts to topple the regimes in Bahrain and Lebanon can properly be described as imperialism, a term he uses in a cavalier fashion to describe Wahhabi proselytizing. Shia Iran has less of a constituency for amalgamation than do its Sunni counterparts, but its efforts are much more overt.

Schwartz uses Wahhabism and Saudi rule over the Arabian peninsula interchangeably. I agree that the two are closely intertwined, but the monarchy has been a staunch ally and has long maintained a low price for oil, thus deserving a measure of credit for our quarter-century of economic growth. This is not to say that our current relationship with Saudi Arabia is tenable anymore. The Saudis have played a prominent role in fomenting extremism, consciously or otherwise. In the age of large-scale terror this is unacceptable, and the burden is on the Saudis to demonstrate that they are taking steps to prevent the use of Saudi soil or Saudi petrodollars in perpetrating such crimes.

That said, Schwartz's perspective and his criticisms are much to narrow. It is all well and good to spotlight the rich cultural and theological diversity of Islam. It is another thing entirely to fawn over all measure of hatemongers and anti-Americans and save the whole of your animus for a regime that, while imperfect, has proved one of our staunchest economic allies for decades. An appreciation for nuance and context would seem to be a much safer bet.

2006-06-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

Journalists Take Sides

I will say again, I am not particularly enthusiastic about the media bias crusade. In general terms it contributes to the lamentable phenomenon of conservative victimology whereby right-leaners believe themselves oppressed by the domestic 'axis of evil;' the mainstream media, the Ivory Tower, and the civil service. I believe the media tends to be biased in favor of the left, but I believe the more serious problem tends to be sensationalism, both for the sake of money and for the glory of 'scooping' a big story.

The decision of the NYT and the LAT to run the story of banking investigations mixes a little of all three. In pursuit of self-aggrandizement and in subservience to an ideology that considers the journalist a world citizen, if anything held to a higher standard of sensitivity and restraint in treating other cultures than in treating one's native culture, journalists and editors from the 'Paper of Record' willfully undermined American security in printing classified information. Whether this might have clashed with the 'spirit' of civil liberties even the journalists concede that it did not violate American law. Thus the papers have proclaimed themselves, not the executive and legislative leaders charged with the responsibility, arbiters of what classified information the American populace is and is not entitled to see.

It is almost certain that the program will be rendered ineffective by its airing. It will help return the financing of terrorism to the shadowy world of paperless transactions and increase the burden for our intelligence services considerably. An ostensibly successful program has been 'outed' by criminal leakers and law-breaking journalists and editors who are unlikely to face the jail time they deserve for knowingly violating the penal code.

Were the press uniformly disinterested I would be angry but not unreasonably so. What is most appalling is that their outrage is limited to misdeeds allegedly perpetrated by our government and service personnel. They were happy to publish in detail what happened to a disabled Iraqi allegedly killed by Marines but refuse to publish details about what happened to the two captured soldiers before and after their deaths. This from the same outlets that yanked 9/11 images off television sets along with pictures of cheering crowds in the Arab World within days of the terrorist attacks.

The message embodied in these publishing decisions is that the American media has a duty to air any and all information about government or military 'misdeeds' (employing of course their own subjective definition) regardless of whether it constitutes a risk to life or to the efficacy of counter and anti-terrorism measures. The corollary to this is that the American media must display inordinate sensitivity to the cultural peculiarities of Muslims and other groups lest their coverage incite protest from CAIR and anger among Americans.

The solution to this irresponsibility is prosecution. Punish the leakers of classified information to the fullest extent of the law, and ensure that journalists and editors who encourage and abet these betrayals end up in the same cell. Do so publicly and allow the American people to see the priorities of the journalistic establishment in bold relief.

2006-06-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Case of North Korea

North Korea's latest round of saber-rattling has produced a predictable amount of soul-searching in Washington and among the punditry. Thankfully very few are arguing for any measure of aggressive military response, though some knaves are whining that by our inaction we are affording North Korea the same 'double standard' that allowed us to recognize India as a nuclear power and yet menace Iran for aspiring to join the nuclear club. This is a vexing problem and I can envision no policy wonk or statesman running into the room with a deus ex machina. My solution is simple, but it is evidently imperfect.

I propose we do nothing. My definition of 'nothing' is not particularly absolutist. We could levy support for sanctions or even a blockade, but these are unlikely to be particularly effectual for a starving and insular country. We could (and certainly should) continue and even expand our efforts to deploy a functioning missile defense shield, preferably one that can extend that protection to our allies. We ought to continue to work with the South Koreans to limit as much as possible the death and destruction caused by a North Korean attack. In the short term we might even attempt to shoot down the test missile, though failure would be an embarrassment of global proportions. But on the aggregate, nothing seems to be the best course of action.

Military attack should remain on the table but only as an infinitesimally small possibility. Even if North Korea lacks the ability to employ its nuclear devices its conventional munitions are substantial and could effect wide swaths of destruction across South Korea, Japan, perhaps even the Western United States. They would race to occupy as much of the Korean peninsula as possible before we could deploy troops to dislodge them, almost certainly at great cost. The best case scenario cost estimate of a nuclear-tipped first strike would be hundreds of thousands of dead North Koreans and decades of international credibility. A conventional decapitation strike gambles the lives of those South Koreans and Japanese on extremely long odds (both that such a strike kills Kim Jong Il and that no viable contingency plans exist).

The arguments for a limited strike to disable either the nuclear program or the long-range missile capability (akin to that suggested by Newt Gingrich) are appealing at face but they too fall apart under scrutiny. This abides by the principle (more widely advanced in regard to Iran) that a surgical strike is unlikely to stimulate a cataclysmic response. This may be the case, but Kim Jong Il is unlikely to be satiated with a diplomatic protest; even a measured response would be devastating. Instead of aiming at the South, North Korea could lob missiles at Japan, which has considerable air defense assets but virtually no retaliatory capability. The United States and the world would have to decide on escalation into a full-scale shooting war. The crux of this is that the danger is the greatest not for our population but for our allies in South Korea and Japan. It is one thing to risk the lives of our soldiers and even our civilians on the decisions of our government and foreign policy establishment; it is another matter entirely to risk the lives of millions of citizens of other countries by acting unilaterally.

Since Munich circa 1938 did not dispel faith in the power of appeasement, that dynamic duo of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton gave it another try in 1994. In that we are having this debate in 2006 it seems safe to say that appeasement failed then too. Offering substantive carrots will not satiate Kim Jong Il, it will but reinforce his faith in the efficacy of saber-rattling (and provide a powerful example of Ahmadinejad, Chavez and other would-be extortionists).

This is not to say that 'nothing' does not have negative consequences. North Korea will use the time to attempt to develop delivery systems for its nuclear munitions and will work to develop long-range missile capacity such that the whole of the United States could be within range. The country will probably continue to traffic in weapons, and we would be well-advised to act to limit that as much as possible. But unlike Iran, North Korea has already reached a point such that the cost of forcible disarmament is simply too great to bear. North Korea also has a disincentive to action; the regime can wield the sword (nuclear and conventional) but the moment they actually employ it they sow the seeds of their own imminent demise. Though I would not infer rationality from Kim Jong Il there is no messianic Shia eschatology guaranteeing him a blissful eternity should he push the button.

Time is the only weapon that can work against North Korea. Kim Jong Il will die, whether at the hands of another man or simply of old age. China and other nations will eventually cease to support North Korea financially. The strains of being a bedrock of absolutist repression in a rapidly liberalizing world will ultimately become too great to bear. Let us neither aid in the regime's longevity nor allow it to take down millions while in its death throes.

2006-06-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Elitism and the Response to Immigration

Allow me first to declare an interest. I am an elitist. I am not an elitist in that I sneer at the stupidity and pliability of the masses; indeed I believe that the common man understands himself and his needs far better than do his self-proclaimed champions. I am an elitist in the sense that I believe that societies tend to progress and regress economically and intellectually based on the efforts of an elite, in a historic context an aristocratic elite and in an American context a meritocratic (occasionally plutocratic) elite.

Over the past several years and particularly the last few months, proponents of immigration (and, more specifically, apologists for illegal immigration) have raised the grim standard of racism to decry politicians and pundits who advocate stringent controls on legal immigration and those who argue for a strident response to illegal immigration. United in this crusade against bigotry are the sneering editorialists at the WSJ and the NYT, unlikely allies on most issues but in lock-step on this one. Representing the anti-racists of the left and the business interests of the right, they conspire to define all who disagree as nativists, xenophobes, etc etc.

The racism charge is failing. The attempt by mainstream media outlets to refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration when talking about the subject is similarly flagging. They might have to look to find them, but people see poll numbers indicating that large majorities of the population support much more strident controls on illegal immigration. The fallback position is to raise the spectre of populism to decry those who oppose amnesty and other measures aimed at confronting illegal immigration.

Reality is quite different. Proponents of concilliation for illegal immigrants purposely ignore a number of facts that the practice raises. First, it is self-evident that having ten to twelve million people living within our borders of whom the government has little information poses at least some danger to our security, though reasonable people can disagree as to the magnitude of that threat. Second, the contribution of illegal immigrants to the economy is atleast partially if not entirely mitigated by the burden they place on emergency rooms, police, and other publicly funded social services; again, reasonable people can disagree as to the degree of this mitigation. Third, America in principle declines to negotiate with terrorists because it would encourage copycats; is not the legitimization of illicit behavior not a tacit encouragement to continue such behavior? Fourth, there are millions of people waiting to get into this country legally, many of whom bear skills in far greater demand than the janitor or the landscaper; it is hardly racist to point out that 'amnesty' places a lawbreaker ahead of these aspirant immigrants, many from societies more impoverished and more repressive than Mexico. Fifth, the strain of assimilating millions upon millions of people of a different linguistic, racial and cultural heritage into our society is a considerable one.

Media and political elites in America (and Europe for that matter) have helped to lock in these taboos. That the WSJ is so wedded to globalization lock stock and barrel as to ignore pertinent ECONOMIC issues raised by illegal immigration is dereliction of duty from the nation's foremost financial journal. That the Democratic Party and its Labor allies are so wedded to multiculturalism as to table discussion of the ramifications of illegal immigration on its minority and blue collar constituents is similarly unfortunate. The fact is that these questions NEED to be answered. We need to know what the economic costs and benefits of amnesty and other concilliatory measures will be. We need to debate the sagacity of giving official sanction to unlawful behavior. We need to have a national conversation as to what it means to be an American and how mass movements of linguistically distinct immigrants may impact this identity. We also need to revisit the Gospel according to Ted (Kennedy) that decrees that immigration is a form of welfare for the Third World and that we as a nation have no right to request that our immigration policies be tailored to meet our economic and security needs.

Make no mistake about it, to the extent that populism thrives in the Old World and the New it is the result of political, academic and media elites refusing to tackle an issue that is of crucial importance to millions of their constituents. The percentage of the French or Austrian electorates that wants to associate with quasi-fascists like Le Pen and Haider is minimal, but the percentage of their respective electorates that is deeply concerned about influx of predominately Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East is considerable. These repugnant individuals, and their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, fill a vacuum produced by the active attempt of their mainstream opposite numbers to quash the issue.

Individuals may entertain prejudices and cling to ignorant beliefs, but taken as a whole the people tend to be far more intelligent than they are given credit for being. To ignore their concerns in the short term can be politically expedient, but to do so in the long term can be political suicide. These politicians need to take the opportunity to argue for globalization, for amnesty, and for other measures they deem necessary; far better they defend them publicly than they deceive their constituents with euphemistic rhetoric.

To scoff at timely and legitimate questions with which America needs to grapple in the name of multiculturalism on the one hand and slavish adherence to a bastardized free market fundamentalism on the other is to endanger the virtue of tolerance and the belief in economic liberalization at home and abroad, the bedrock principles that underly the NYT editorialists and their WSJ counterparts, respectively. Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan are repulsive men, but the more elected leaders and consumer-driven media outlets spurn their constituents the larger the followings of these men will become.

The elitists of which I speak are endangering their very relevance. I can see Tom Tancredo riding into political leadership in Washington astride his trusty steed, brandishing a spitoon and dripping tobacco juice on the White House carpet. Unless the nation's self-appointed leadership discerns how out of touch it has become, we may get the chance to see the disciples of Jackson descend on the Nation's Capitol once more.

2006-06-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Democrats and the Online Left

A few days removed from the tin foil hats and hyperbole of the YearlyKos convention, commentators write and left are tripping over each other to esteem the importance of the left-wing blogosphere. To Byron York, the watchword of this much-publicized event is scrutiny, the steely glare of the public eye that is supposed to bring these barking dogs to heel. To Dean Bartlett, writing in the Weekly Standard, the blogs have hit their peak readership and are beginning a decline that will soon sweep away all delusions of efficacy. I think that both, to a degree, misapprehend the meaning of these websites.

Serious Democratic politicians understand that while the blogosphere can turn a primary also-ran into a name (see Howard Dean for reference) they can indeed be a liability in the general election. The man who really put his finger on it was Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, who said in January, "The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections. The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left." An angry blogger at Daily Kos rebutted, "Not one dime, ladies and gentlemen, to anything connected with Steve Elmendorf. Anyone stupid enough to actually give a quote like that deserves to have every single one of his funding sources dry up." Sure, the lesser minds among the blogosphere and the denizens of the comment boxes were upset at the blasphemy but I would posit that the more intelligent among them were upset because they knew it was completely and utterly true.

People who are animated enough to publish blogs or to troll them religiously even in slow news months are the people that turn up to wave signs, knock on doors, and camp on gym floors to campaign. They also get people excited (or scared) enough to open their wallets and give, give, give. The blogs have become the new grassroots, taking the place of dwindling union rolls and other aspects of civil society in providing the energy that can give people like Howard Dean publicity that would have eluded them in years past. Who will be the Dean of 2008? Feingold? Gore? Mark Warner governed as a moderate and likely will run as one, but his visit to the YearlyKos suggests that he believes that a candidate spurns the online left at his peril.

Hillary Clinton's four year long Presidential run has adopted the opposite strategy. She is clearly preparing for the general election and presupposing that the primaries will take care of themselves. Proving that hell hath no fury like a whining liberal scorned, the left descended on a Clinton speaking appearance and booed loudly enough to make the news. Clinton knows that she has opened herself up to a challenge from the left, but she is gambling that her name recognition and her own fundraising talent will be enough to trump anything that the online left can manage. Indeed the primaries will be an extremely important test of the efficacy of Kos, MoveOn.org, and their ilk; defeat for the Clinton juggernaut would vindicate to a large extent those who brushed off Elmendorf with a sneer and a threat.

The difference between Warner and Clinton is that one is running for the nomination while the other is running for the election. Warner may end up being too moderate for the online left to suffer, but no doubt he will be preferred to Clinton for the token gesture of humoring them. The problem this creates is that the cozier he is to Kos, to Atrios, and to others like them the greater the likelihood that he will become answerable for every epithet, every four-letter word, every tinfoil hat idea tossed around on their pages. I would not doubt the RNC will probably retain people solely for the purpose of finding these nuggets that look oh-so-good on posters and television commercials Warner, or Feingold, or anyone else who plays ball with the online left may, as Byron York speculated, ultimately be forced to make a choice between repudiating the people who brought them to national prominence and alienating the wider electorate.

Thus as Elmendorf realized but made the mistake of saying aloud, the online left is both a boon and a boondoggle. Its role is significant because regardless of whether its readership is ten million or twenty, it includes the activists and fundraisers that any darkhorse (and perhaps any mainstream candidate) needs to ascend to national prominence. Such an appreciation must be tempered, however, by the fact that the views held dear by this constituency are vociferously repudiated by moderate Democrats and independents necessary for victory in a general election. Contrary to what Bartlett said I doubt it ebbs, but I think it may take multiple election cycles for candidates to strike the appropriate balance between coopting the online left and keeping an acceptable distance from it.

2006-06-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

Pensees

1. I'm not huge for the media bias crusade and am a bit skeptical that every journalist who graduates from Columbia is a Gore-touting Naderite. Nor am I particularly moved when this or that right wing pundit maintains that Democrats are rooting for our defeat. But the coverage of the death of Zarqawi is starting to make a liar of me. Virtually every mainstream media outlet with a left-leaning editorial position has emphasized in its news how little the death of this man matters in the grand scheme of things. A news piece in the WaPo actually referred to the use of Zarqawi in US 'propaganda.' Prominent Democratic pols like Murtha, Harman and Kerry who last week were arguing that our failure to get this man underscored the need for our departure are now saying that his killing underscores the need for our departure. The cynic in me cannot but think that these individuals are less concerned with the success of this venture or the ramifications of its outcome for our foreign policy than in effecting withdrawal with the greatest possible political benefit for the Democratic Party.

2. The death of Zarqawi is a substantial victory for our effort in Iraq. I am not suggesting that it is a colossal tactical victory that will cripple the insurgents' activities, though I would imagine it will limit the attacks that had his personal involvement. I argue instead that it is a strategic victory, a morale booster for our soldiers and for the people of Iraq as well as a warning to insurgents and terrorists who perceived every breath that Zarqawi took as a sign of US and Iraqi impotence. There is also evidence that he was expanding operations into Europe. He also played a significant personal role in fomenting sectarian conflict, and while it may not stop such violence in the short term it reduces the likelihood that another Karbala or even Samarra attack (the latter has not been definitively linked to him) will take place.

3. Stop defending Ann Coulter. She is a merchant of shock value whose profile is raised every time she makes another idiotic statement. Those who defend her help line her coffers but do nothing to aid the conservative cause. Yes, the 'Jersey Girls' made wrongheaded and stupid remarks, but those have been cogently and tactfully rebutted by others on several occasions. Besides, the layperson will perceive this not as a just riposte to fringe lefties but as an unwarranted attack on 9/11 widows. Quit buying her book, quit pretending that Coulter, a millionaire several times over, is somehow a victim, and acknowledge that with all the lines of tact and decency she has transgressed over the past several years she deserves no such coddling.

2006-06-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Lost City

I finally decided that I was going to see the film, come hell or high water; with a nine week old in tow and a torrential downpour in the offing I had both. Still, it was worth the trip. Andy Garcia's magnum opus, twenty years in the making, has received little fanfare aside from a few doting pieces on NRO and a handful of editorials denouncing it for not showing the Cuba of the proles. I live in reputedly the most well-educated region in these United States, with as many multiplexes and indie cinemas in a five mile radius as most anywhere on the planet, and yet I could find a whopping two venues willing to carry the film. Even theaters willing to screen Thank You for Smoking wouldn't touch this one.

I was not disappointed. It shined the spotlight on a convivial pre-Castro Havana, a city of music and dance, laughter and mirth. The metaphor for this is El Tropico, the nighclub run by Garcia's character Fico, where there exists a little bit of corruption and a little bit of vice but where the greater evil, the Mafioso, is turned away. Havana is a city ruled by a despot, yes, but he an anachronism and a ridiculous figure. Garcia does not pretend that all was roses, but his movie paints a portrait of a resilient city that had survived petty tyrants. The very soul of Havana had weathered repression, corruption and vice and emerged relatively unscathed.

Into this stepped Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, ignorant nihilists willing to sweep all asunder in the name of "Revolucion." As is evident by my writings over the past two years I tend to subscribe to a view of these two men not displayed on t-shirts or mused in polite conversation on the Hollywood cocktail party circuit. As former Batista cronies of varying culpability are taken to the wall, Guevera offers only a chilling smirk. The saxophone is banned because of its tenuous connection to Belgium and thus through some warped chain of continuity to the repression in the Congo. The revolutionary underlings run their domains as petty fiefdoms, with the stability of land and property disappearing on a dialectical caprice.

The essential point that this movie makes is that pre-Castro Havana was in need of a change but that the cure was orders of magnitude worse than the disease. As in other revolutions where the extremists have succeeded, specifically Iran and Russia, they managed to coopt the legitimate desires of the people for a better life. Most poignant is the character of Fico's widowed sister-in-law, whose husband professed faith in a democracy and pluralism that Castro never would have tolerated but who became a shill for the regime because she believed she was acting in accordance with his wishes.

This movie is not perfect; the acting is occasionally subpar and some of the characters poorly written. Despite this, it could have shared its very important message with millions more had not the movie been so difficult to find. I am no conspiracist, but Yahoo could not be bothered to list it among its 'currently in theaters.' Two theaters in DC or lower MD are carrying it at present. The handful of reviews that came out reflected the reviewers' epistemologies and not the merits of the movie.

I would go so far as to say this movie received so little fanfare because it puts itself in diametrical opposition to the doting Eisenstein-esque treatment that Hollywood affords Castro et al. The Motorcycle Diaries was flatly insulting to anyone with a moral compass and a memory. Oliver Stone's new hagiography of Castro was so disgusting that even HBO wouldn't touch it. Countless Hollywood actors, from the despicable Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover to the usually sane Steven Spielberg, have flown to Havana to pay homage. This fawning and uncritical affinity for a mass murderer was precisely what Garcia's epic stood against. Despite its low box office tallies and its aforementioned flaws I believe The Lost City deserves consideration for Best Picture honors. I have little doubt that Hollywood considers race relations, gay shepherds and gender-benders to be more important than the plight of several million Cubans, but I offer my endorsement nonetheless.

2006-06-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I got so sick of being spammed with ads for FoxNews that I switched over to Blogger comments so I can delete them. You can still comment anonymously.

2006-06-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Disaster Looms

I was initially heartened by what I thought was Secretary of State Rice's masterful ploy. Just as Tehran made an exceptionally shrewd maneuver in offering direct talks, Rice's response brilliantly balanced the appearance of diplomacy with the establishment of conditions that Tehran would not meet. On the heels of this comes much more unsettling news; the six-nation accord on dealing with Tehran contains provisions that would allow Iran to enrich uranium on its own soil and develop a civilian nuclear capacity. The unsettling prospect is that the nations may have assembled a package that the regime can accept and save face.

There are myriad practical concerns raised by such a deal. First, this cements the long-term viability of the regime. In the meantime, a civilian nuclear capacity will furnish the Islamic Republic with hundreds of trained technicians. This represents the seminal flaw of the IAEA; it recognizes civilian nuclear technology as benign when in fact the proliferation of nuclear know-how has taken place under its auspices for decades. Even if the regime does not continue its efforts in secret, which it very likely will (bear in mind the world knew nothing of this program until dissidents revealed it in 2002 and it was powerless to prevent North Korea from going nuclear in spite of accords to the contrary), it will possess with the full blessing of the world a host of dual use technologies and the technicians to put them to good use.

Still, the overarching concern is that such an accord will undercut the determination of America and her allies to deal with the problem when it represents a front-burner threat. I am not a warmonger. I have no particular desire to see cities in ruins and morgues full of dead Iranians. But this situation presents an opportunity to deal with Iran once and for all. The Islamic Republic has suborned terrorism regionally and internationally for three decades. The danger posed by Iran to oil, to allies, and ultimately to America itself would grow exponentially were it to obtain nuclear weaponry. What assurances do we have that this will not be North Korea 1994, with the 5 + 1 Nations breathing a collective sigh of relief even as Iranian efforts to acquire the bomb are redoubled, international mischief-making continues or increases, and domestic repression is unaffected? Additionally, to view this through the paradigm of hostage negotiation, how do we prevent the next regime, be it Syria, Sudan or a similar international pariah, from using naked extortion to blackmail concessions and legitimacy from the community of nations?

If accepted, this deal would help to legitimize a regime that is almost as alien as was Saddam's, one that maintains its grip on the populace through violence and intimidation. I cannot emphasize this enough; to agree to a one-sided deal with Tehran is to give the mullahs a diplomatic victory they have not enjoyed since the hostage crisis, augmenting the international, regional and domestic stature of a regime thought to be teetering. By removing military force as atleast a possibility it would dishearten millions in the country who may not have been wishing for an invasion but saw US approbation as a limit on the potential for repression and a chance to obtain funding and assistance. Concluding a deal that provides concessions without attempting to influence the domestic (or international) behavior of the regime is to me the function equivalent of Papa Bush's postwar decision to abandon the Iraqi Shias to their fate. I would anticipate a harsh crackdown on Azeris and other anti-Regime forces in the aftermath of any accord.

There is a better way. Demand Iran cease its effort to acquire nuclear weapons and subject itself to unfettered inspection. Tie any concessions to Iran's domestic behavior and support for terrorism. Announce that any military attack will target command and control centers as well as nuclear facilities. The current leadership of the Islamic Republic cannot accept such an arrangement and retain power. Nonetheless, the reason that taxis will not pick up turbaned clerics has nothing to do with apostasy. There exists a sizable contingent within the Iranian clergy that prefers the good life to cave-hopping or finding itself on the business end of a Tomahawk Cruise Missile. I am confident they would act to muzzle Ahmadinejad and even Supreme Leader Khamenei, whose legitimacy rests not on piety or religious scholarship but on the dying whim of Ayatollah Khomenei. If they fail to act, the regime would face the consequences.

By following this course of action, the Bush Administration would support the wishes of the Iranian people presently ignored by the ruling mullahs and reinforce the belief that American foreign policy can support morality and not merely proximal economic self-interest. Such a move would contribute to our long-term security by removing once and for all the world's foremost state sponsor of terror. Lastly, it would avoid perpetuating the shameful and ineffectual precedent set in 1994 whereby concessions were extracted by a tyranny from a democracy through the tacit threat of force.