Month: September 2004

(Much, much more soon). No president who has presided over Abu Ghraib should ever say he wants to put anyone on a leash. That’s all. Stay tuned.

Maybe I need to be clearer. The reason I believe things are dire in Iraq is pretty simple. The evidence is accumulating that the insurgency – fostered by Baathist thugs, al Qaeda murderers, and other Jihadists – is gaining traction. That would be a manageable problem if the population despised them and saw a way through to a better society. But the disorder and mayhem continues to delegitimize the Iraqi government and, by inference, the coalition occupation. And the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. to seal the borders or effectively counter the terror contributes to the general view that the insurgents are going to win, and therefore the notion that the U.S.-led liberation may make matters even worse than they were before. And this is a vicious cycle. In other words, one reason the insurgency is spreading is because it has tacit support or merely passive acceptance among the general population. And once the general population turns against an occupying power, then things get really … Algerian. The key moment was probably when George W. Bush blinked in Fallujah. That was when the general population inferred that we were not prepared to win. It’s amazing, really. This president has a reputation for toughness and resolution. Yet at arguably the most critical moment in this war, he gave in. He was for taking Fallujah before he was against it. I cannot believe the situation is beyond rescue. But this president’s policies have made it much much more difficult than it might have been. Elections are now more vital than ever – because they are the sole means of gaining the advantage in the legitimacy stakes. With those must come a relentless guerrilla war against the enemy, a massive increase in troop levels (whether Iraqi or America), and a huge effort for reconstruction. But we have thrown away a year’s worth of opportunity. By incompetence and lack of will. Fallujah was a kind of Dunkirk. And Bush is no Churchill.

NPR’S BALANCE: Compare these interviews with Bush campaign honcho Ken Mehlman and with Mary Beth Cahill. They just can’t help themselves.

EDWARDS PICKS IT UP: My Cheney quote from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer yesterday was in fact used by John Edwards – on the Imus show. The point was not about the decision to depose Saddam – the merits of which obviously changed after 9/11. The point was an awareness of how difficult it would be to occupy Iraq, put it back together again and keep it from falling apart. The latter Cheney and Bush relentlessly downplayed. Here’s Edwards: “When [Cheney] was asked why they didn’t finish the job in Iraq . . . he talked about the enormous danger and risk of getting bogged down, of having to govern the country. Of the casualties that would be incurred. To use some of the same language these people have used against John, he was against getting bogged down in Iraq before he was for it.” Sharp one. Of course, it means little with respect to whether Bush or Kerry are better suited to take over the job from now on. Tonight I’ll be watching the debate at Dartmouth College, following a talk in the same auditorium on the election. If you’re near Dartmouth, join us: Filene Auditorium, Dartmouth, 7.30 pm.

Another report details growing anarchy in the protected “Green Zone” in Baghdad. And this WSJ reporter cites chaos and terror throughout the country:

Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’-When asked ‘how are things?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.’ What they mean by ‘situation’ is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t-control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people,-the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds-of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers,-there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation,- basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad-alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health — which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers — has now stopped disclosing them.

Is this reporter biased? Perhaps. Is it that bad? I sincerely hope not. But are they making all this up? I seriously doubt it.

You can debate the merits of the D.C. handgun bill. What you cannot debate is the obscene way in which the residents of D.C. have absolutely no say in how their city is governed; and the way in which the Republican party uses the District’s “citizens” as pawns in their national electoral politics. Here’s a rich quote from the Washington Post account:

Bill sponsor Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) called the vote a bipartisan victory for District residents’ constitutional right to bear arms.

Excuse me, but why should I give a rat’s ass what some Indiana congressman thinks? Thank God this won’t pass the Senate. But it’s a disgusting assault on the basic principles of democracy.

THE ADS ARE HERE: If you want to advertize on this blog – with reader demographics here – please contact henry@blogads.com.

GALLUP: Ruy Teixera, who has long touted a new Democratic majority, asks some pointed questions about Gallup’s polling. Meanwhile, he cites two new polls showing the race dead even. Who knew?

Yes, there are some. And they are beginning to speak out more.

THIN-SKINNED CATHOLICS: The Boston Globe’s James Carroll goes off the deep end again.

YOUNG MEN AND BUSH: Zogby sees a growing problem. My own view is that a draft is not unthinkable in the next few years – and that many young men see this as a natural progression from our current travails. This is the sleeper issue – under the radar but beginning to take off. It shouldn’t be exploited by unscrupulous Democrats, but it can certainly be brought up in the debates. Edwards should raise it with Cheney. Will we need one? Why won’t we?

A RISING STAR: David Catania, a friend of mine who nevertheless regularly scolds me for any number of failings, has now left the GOP. He’s a great young pol, got elected in a majority black city as a white Republican, shook up the District of Columbia city government, cares deeply about personal freedom and urban policy, and should be the future of the Republican party. He has now quit to become an independent. He cannot stand the blatant, ugly gay-baiting at the heart of today’s GOP. And why on earth should he?

I linked to a Slate piece last week that had Grover Norquist telling El Mundo that much of a generation – the FDR generation – was “anti-American.” That would better have been described as “un-American.” It’s all about the Spanish translation. Matthew Continetti, a rising star at the Weekly Standard, provides the context.

SAINT CLINTON: Blasphemous, but amusing.

This blog has been nominated for best Republican party coverage at the Washington Post’s Best Blogs poll. So vote for the site! We’re up against some biggies. You can do so here.

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq… All of a sudden you’ve got a battle you’re fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.” – vice president Dick Cheney, 1992. If John Edwards doesn’t use this in his debate, he’s nuts.

“FARG” NOT “FAG”: The DeMint email did not, apparently, use the word “fag” but “farg”, a nickname for the intended recipient. The slur “dike” (sic) was in it.

We have lots of new readers and several emails complaining about the white on navy color scheme. That’s why we have a little button just above this that says “Black And White.” If you click on it, you get a more conventional format.

Here’s an email which reminds me why I remain so conflicted about this election. I don’t think I’m the only one. The notion that the vote this year is obvious does indeed understate the complexity of the decision. Resolve versus indecision? Or incompetence versus a new path? Do we write Iraq off, or do we plow on? Here’s an email that is about as persuasive a case as I have read on why Kerry, for all his glaring faults, is still worth considering – for conservative reasons:

When the invasion of Iraq was being debated, I had just returned from two years in Morocco and my now wife had just returned from a year in Egypt. We both considered supporting the war. The Arab world is mired in a political culture obsessed with blaming others for their misfortunes and obsessing over Israel while doing nothing to find practical solutions to their own problems closer to home.

When I was in Morocco, there was a demonstration in Rabat that drew between half a million and three million demonstrators against the reoccupation of the West Bank in April of 2002. Never mind that Israel is on the other side of the Mediterranean and that their demonstration could have no impact on the Palestinians’ situation. Never mind that their own government has occupied the Western Sahara against the wishes of the native inhabitants of that territory, a situation that in some ways parallels the situation of Israel and Palestine. Never mind that, in the early 21st century, they are still ruled by a Monarchy making only feeble gestures towards instituting a democracy, and have a stagnant economy barely able to keep up with the country’s birth rate, let alone employ the millions of idle, jobless young Moroccans whose best hope in life is to emigrate legally or illegally to Europe in hopes of finding menial, low-wage labor. Few Moroccans will lift a finger to try to change their own situation, but they will pour into the streets for the sake of an impotent gesture on the behalf of the Palestinians. Political discussions tend to revolve around conspiracy theories involving “The Jews.” The 10 year old who lived downstairs from me was convinced that 4000 Jews had called in sick to work on 9/11, tipped off by the Mossad that the attack was going to occur. His father would not admit to holding this view, but probably did and would say publicly that Bin Laden was not behind the attack (Powell promised a dossier in Arabic spelling out evidence of Bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11. This was never done, to my knowledge. A serious oversight.).

My wife had similar experiences in Egypt. We both thought that a shock to the system and a scheme to jar at least one Arab country onto the right track might be worth it. In the end, we both decided that it would be a bad idea, and for good conservative reasons. Utopian social programs rarely work domestically, in circumstances in which the architects of social engineering share a language and culture with their subjects and in which the surrounding society is stable and prosperous. If this is the case, how can we expect a radical experiment in social engineering to succeed in a foreign country with a radically different culture, and in which distrust of the United States is imbibed with mother’s milk? Arabs are fixated enough on what they perceive as past humiliations, how can adding another defeat to the list help them?

Subsequent rationales for the war were not convincing. Engage the terrorists in Iraq or face them here? Does anyone really believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had a one-way ticket to the US and a scholarship at a flight school but decided to turn around and have a go at us in Iraq after he heard about the invasion? Iraq, in fact, supplies a theater for attacking the US that most of the fighters there, foreign and Iraqi, would not have if we had not given it to them. If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we could continue to contain him for 2 billion per year and when his system did finally collapse, it would be up to Iraqis to sort out the mess, not us. As for Blair’s claim that Muslim militants hate the West for our very existence, I don’t buy it. Resent us, yes. Envy us, sure. But if we didn’t meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, I doubt they would attack us. Bush’s claim in his first public statement after 9/11 that they hate us for our freedom is a close parallel to the claim of Muslim militants that we hate them for their core identity and values, that is, that we hate them for being Muslims, that we hate Islam as such. The Middle East is a disaster. Its economies are stagnant, its resources are minimal and being depleted, its population is growing, its infrastructure is crumbling, its literacy rates are low and so on and so forth. There will be no stability there in the foreseeable future and the correct response to this should be to minimize involvement with the region.

Now, we are stuck fighting to try to democratize a polity that is inherently unstable. If there are democratic elections, the result is not likely to be a liberal democracy, but rather one of the illiberal sort. Defeat would be a disaster, victory will be hard to define and unlikely to bring great reward. I agree with Christopher Hitchens that it is shameful to be wishing defeat on the US in Iraq in the hopes that this translates into defeat for Bush at home. I agree that we have to face the fact that we are committed in Iraq now and cannot afford to talk about the past as though turning back the clock were an option. I am no fan of Kerry. Despite all of this, I don’t want to hand another four years to a man who brought us unnecessarily into this predicament at such great cost and who waged this war so incompetently. This, combined with the irresponsible economic policy that you have also criticized, have convinced me to cast my vote for Kerry. We cannot afford to dwell on the past at the expense of engaging with the present as it is. But neither can we forget past lapses of judgment and hope that they will not occur again.

The conservative case for Kerry. It’s worth pondering.