Month: March 2003

Why has France ordered its diplomatic staff to leave Israel before Baghdad? Do they know more about what Saddam has in store than we do? Or did they just sell him the means to do it?

If you’re pro-war, there’s only one way to get away with it. David Remnick, the pro-war New Yorker editor, nails it:

Remnick, who’s very soothing on the phone, knows he upset his staff, and takes care to point out that two thirds of the piece was spent “beating up on Bush.”

So if you’re a pro-war liberal, you have to attack the man who’s responsible for carrying this policy out. Or else … no more dinner parties for you. I do think this phenomenon is actually intensifying the demonization of Bush among blue state elites. The one connecting thread is contempt for the president. If you pass that litmus test, you’re allowed some lee-way in your opinions.

The latest polling data show something worth remembering as we head into war. USA Today’s poll shows the highest levels supporting an invasion of Iraq – 64 percent – since November 2001, a jump of five points from two weeks ago. 57 percent say that the Bush administration has made a convincing argument for intervention. This is far higher support for war than before the first Gulf War and a remarkable finding, to my mind, given the relentless anti-war propaganda flooding the airwaves. Americans see the danger; and they want to act. Finally, the determination of this country to defend itself is going to be demonstrated. We can only pray now that the war is as successful as possible and as casualty-free on both sides as any such war can be.

THE HOUSE THAT JACQUES BUILT: And part of the credit for firming support for taking down Saddam must surely go to Jacques Chirac. Over the weekend, perhaps sensing his over-played hand, the president of the French Republic backtracked a little. But the damage has been done. USA Today’s polling of American attitudes toward foreign countries reveals how deep the chasm has become. Only 20 percent now think of France as an ally. 40 percent think of France as either “unfriendly” or an “enemy.” 68 percent of Americans believe that France has behaved unreasonably at the Security Council, and blame France primarily for the diplomatic failure. 68 percent think the Bush administration has diplomatically done the best job possible or a fairly good job; compared with 31 percent that thinks it’s done a fairly bad job or completely mishandled the problem. For Blair, the intransigence of the French has been a particular blessing. His parliamentary supporters are putting out the line that the essential decision Britain has to make is whether British foreign policy will be dictated by Paris – not a popular option in Middle Britain. Everything depends now, of course, on the conduct of the war. But if it is successful, France will be more diplomatically isolated and politically weak than at any time in decades. Or maybe that’s too much to hope for.

Peggy Noonan weighs in today. I had my say yesterday.

SADDAM’S LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE: “I said a long time ago that the best service Saddam Hussein could give his people – and I’m sure that as a leader he loves his people – was to just disappear from the scene.” – Jacques Chirac, revealing yet another card.

STOPPING THE SUITCASE: Fred Hiatt makes a vital case this morning. The Bush administration should listen.

Sunday’s New York Times was a “flood-the-zone” swamp of anti-war pieces. It’s going to help al Qaeda; it’s going to be conducted incompetently; and on and on. Some of this is worth doing: a newspaper’s job is to point out dangers ahead. But the sheer weight of it was Rainesianism at its least credible. Compare these two stories, for example, from the Times and the Washington Post. They’re both about al Qaeda. The money quote from the Times:

“An American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups,” a senior American counterintelligence official said. “And it is a very effective tool.”

There’s not much analysis of what a successful removal of Saddam would do to al Qaeda’s recruitment, nor much insight into the state of the terrorist organization in general. But the anti-war point will surely not have been missed by most readers. Now check out the Post’s al Qaeda story. Money quote:

“I believe the tide has turned in terms of al Qaeda,” said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer. “We’re at the top of the hill.” Goss’s sentiment was echoed by a dozen other intelligence experts and law enforcement officials with regular access to information about U.S. counterterrorism operations. “For the first time,” Goss said, “they have more to fear from us than we have to fear from them.”

The stories aren’t mutually exclusive. But one is dealing mainly with the past and what we know; and one is dealing mainly with the unknowable future. One is news; the other is thinly veiled editorializing. (One good sign, however, is the Op-Ed page. In the last week, there have been pieces by real, not token, conservatives: Boris Johnson and Reuel Marc Gerecht. Methinks David Shipley, the new editor, is having an effect at opening up the page to new voices. Not a moment too soon.)

THE DEFECTIONS BEGIN: One major Kurdish die-hard Saddamite has switched sides in advance of conflict:

Jowhad Herki is chief of the powerful Herki tribe and since the 1960s has supported successive Baghdad regimes in putting down revolts by fellow Kurds. He arrived in northern Iraq via London after travelling there from Baghdad for medical treatment. He is a former member of the Iraqi parliament. “This is a major development that shows that they are abandoning the sinking ship,” said Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader in the northern autonomous zone. “It will have a major influence on other tribal leaders to close ranks because they have nothing to hope for from Saddam.”

Just a straw in the wind. Except it isn’t a wind. It’s a hurricane.

A BBC correspondent is clearly horrified by the religious faith of most Americans. What else could explain their resolution to go to war? The condescension drips from every sentence. Here’s a classic extract:

Mr and Mrs Average share an uncomplicated faith with its roots in the puritanism of their forebears. According to that faith there is such a thing as heaven – 86% of Americans, we are told by the pollsters, believe in heaven. But much more striking to me, and much more pertinent to current world events, is the fact that 76% or three out of four people you meet on any American street believe in hell and the existence of Satan. They believe that the devil is out to get you. That evil is a force in the world – a force to be engaged in battle. Much of that battle takes place in the form of prayer. Americans will talk of praying as if it were the most normal, rational thing to do.

The word “rational” is used again and again in contrast with religious faith, as if reason and belief were completely incompatible. But then in Europe, that’s how they see things – and partly why the cultural gap is growing.

WHAT THEY SAY: Scanning some of the quickie photo sites for the anti-war demos in San Francisco, I was struck by some of the posters and slogans. “Mid-Life Menopausal Hippies For Peace” struck me as unusually honest. A Hitler mustache put on George Bush’s face and the U.S. flag turned into a swastika captures the essence of one faction. “Fight the Rich, Not Their War,” was somewhat retro. And my favorite: “We Support Our Troops When They SHOOT Their Officers.” Ah, yes. Loyal opposition. No wonder polls show war-support firming up.

There are a lot of new readers of the site these days (traffic seems to rising around 15 percent a month) and so I’m getting more letters asking me to change the color scheme of the page. It’s a matter of taste, of course, and I like the distinctive design of the site. But some find it hard to read. That’s why there’s a little button at the top of the Dish that says “Black and White.” Click on it, and the color scheme is reversed. Hope that helps. More dish tomorrow.

What to make of the following, reported in Salon by Michelle Goldberg:

[Camp] Vandenberg is about 50 miles north Santa Barbara, Calif. In a few days, activists will start converging on a nearby four-acre plot of land that Bud Boothe, a World War II veteran, donated to the Military Globalization Project. They’re going to camp there and train to breach the base’s security and possibly vandalize some of its equipment. Lumsdaine, the Military Globalization Project coordinator, is a 48-year-old who has been arrested at Vandenberg twice. He describes the base as “the electronic nerve center of the global-surveillance-targeting, weapons-guidance, and military-command satellites that will largely direct the war.” The base is 99,000 square acres, with a perimeter running through rugged, wooded terrain. “If people are committed and determined and in halfway decent physical shape, it is possible to get in, because it’s enormous and much of the land is still fairly wild,” he says. Within the base, Lumsdaine says, are “major off-limits security zones,” that, when breached, “set off a series of responses in their own security procedures which require disruption and partial shut down of regular activities,” which means the base can’t operate at full capacity.

This is not legitimate dissent. It isn’t free speech. It isn’t even wishing victory for Saddam. It’s an attempt actually to impede the successful conduct of this war, to fight for the enemy by attacking a U.S. military base. No, these people don’t represent most anti-war types. But they exist and they’re planning sabotage. It didn’t take long, did it?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed ; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm.”

STATS WATCH: “Why does no one have the courage to say loudly and unequivocally that 50 million people around the world are going to die in a matter of days or months or at the most a few years unless they are treated immediately with the life-saving drugs that are now available? I have arrived at this figure after conversations with many experts.” – Larry Kramer, in the New York Times today. He must be speed-dialing poor David Shipley again. The margin of error in that statistic is so enormous it’s meaningless. “Experts” have told Kramer that 50 million people could die in the next few days? Or is that years? Er. something like that. Score one for fact-checkers. Kramer probably wrote that 50 million people would die in the next few minutes, and got bargained down. The point is not that we shouldn’t be concerned about the world-wide AIDS crisis. It is that hyperbole like this – Kramer’s specialty – doesn’t help the cause. It harms it.

Whatever remaining respect one might have had for Hans Blix just evaporated for me. Global warming is a bigger threat than weapons of mass destruction?? Then there’s this steaming pile of wishful thinking:

So there’s no way you can dis-invent that and chemical weapons have been the weapons of choice for terrorists as they were in Japan in the subway a number of years ago, so they will not be gone. But I don’t think there’s any reason for a rant of hysteria, no.
At the same time, though, one must not disregard and forget the things that are breeding these terrorist movements. Why do they become terrorists? Why do they become so desperate they are willing to blow up airplanes or buildings? Therefore we have to look at the social problems as well.

“Social problems” caused a multi-millionaire religious fanatic to murder 3000 people? Give me a break. You see in this interview every half-baked European rationale for ignoring the threat we face. No wonder the guy eventually sided with the French.

Well, heterosexual Asian-American men, anyway. I blame all those Berkeley white guys.