Month: October 2003

The donors for Iraq are beginning to line up. Money quote from a senior administration official: “The Japanese are talking in the billions. The Europeans are revisiting their earlier numbers. They’re all beginning to look at this as a security issue, not a development issue, and they’re scrounging for money from other places in their budgets.” Imagine that: Iraq as a security issue. Those Europeans. Always thinking ahead of the game.

Dan Drezner parses new reports that suggest that there was only one leak from the administration (not six) and thta it might well have been unintentional. It’s plausible – well, about as plausible as any of these scenarios has been to me.

BARONE ON ARNOLD: A judicious round-up, for British readers.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “The September 11 attacks were probably closer to Dresden or Hiroshima in that a lot of planning and resources were put into deliberately killing civilians in large numbers. The IRA’s killing of civilians is equally wrong, but the IRA would argue that it did so by accident. That is no succour to the victims’ families, but the IRA was one of the few guerrilla organisations that gave warnings.” – Gerry Adams, IRA front-man, interviewed in the anti-war newspaper, the Independent. I love the idea of terrorists killing civilians “by accident;” and the equation of America in 2001 with Nazi Germany or Fascist Japan in the last world war. And then there’s this answer to the wonderfully blunt question: “Was the IRA right to try to blow up Mrs Thatcher?” Adams’ answer begins, “Well, you have to see it in the context of the time …” Every now and again, the mask slips and you realize that many people out there are not just anti-American. They are actually pro-terror.

If some Dems want to delegitimize Schwarzenegger’s triumph, they should surely consider this: in Gray Davis’s re-election bid in 2002, he gained 3.47 million votes. Arnold just won 3.69 million votes. The vote to recall Davis garnered 4.36 million. If that isn’t legitimacy, what is?

THE “IMMINENT” THREAT: Here’s a fascinating nugget. Ted Kennedy, who is now claiming that the administration claimed an “imminent” threat from Saddam, didn’t feel that way directly after the president’s State of the Union address last January. Here’s the money quote from the Los Angeles Times:

But afterward, some said the speech failed to end the debate on whether to go to war. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said he would introduce a resolution today that would require Bush to come back to Congress and present “convincing evidence of an imminent threat” before U.S. troops are sent to war with Iraq. Congress approved a resolution last fall authorizing Bush to use military force against Iraq, and that measure did not require a second review.

Now, presumably that means that Kennedy himself didn’t believe that the president had argued or shown that Saddam’s threat was “imminent.” Now he’s changed his tune. Pure politics, as usual, from the senator from Massachusetts. (In another twist, you’ll see that the L.A. Times reporter simply describes Bush’s speech as arguing that the threat is “imminent” with no evidence at all. She doesn’t even notice the discrepancy between her headline and Kennedy’s protestation. I guess people hear what they want to hear.)

A PERFECT POST: On Austria’s new pride.

Not much public engagement yet from the social right on my WSJ piece yesterday, as Jonah noticed. Well, maybe in time, I’ll get an answer of sorts. My questions about what conservatives are actually for with regard to gay citizens weren’t meant to be purely rhetorical. So why no answers? Here’s my inference. A hefty part of the opposition to same-sex marriage is based on purely religious grounds. Some on the social right do not make any real distinctions between Biblical law and civil law. Or rather, they don’t on matters pertaining to homosexuality. So they’re against everything to do with gay rights, period. Secular opponents of marriage for gays may well be in favor of some sort of civil union that isn’t quite marriage, but (with some noble exceptions like Jonah) they avoid saying so in order not to offend their fundamentalist allies. The anti-gay marriage forces are, in fact, more conflicted than the pro-gay marriage forces. The left’s former hostility to the idea has largely evaporated within the gay world over the last decade. But the fundamentalist right’s opposition to any recognition of gay relationships at all is as strong as ever. That means that no conservative compromise – internally or externally – looks possible. Or am I wrong?

AND ON HATE CRIMES: Some of you who read my WSJ piece asked whether I support them. Nuh-huh. I find them horrifying. But I simply cannot see how an intellectually honest person can support them for everyone except gays. That’s Bush’s position. It’s intellectually absurd. If hate crimes are thought-crimes, it doesn’t matter to whom they’re directed: they’re all wrong (my position). But if they’re legitimate ways to deter crimes of violence and hatred against minorities, then excluding one minority that everyone acknowledges is a common victim of “hate” makes no sense. Some might argue that homosexuality is a choice. Well, so is religion, and that’s protected. Can someone give me a reason for the gay exclusion?

POOR ALTERMAN: His loony thesis that the media is right-leaning isn’t shared by many. Hey, but what do the viewers know? They’re just morons, aren’t they?

FIGHTING BACK WORKS: The minute Sharon started taking the fight back to the terrorists, something strange happened. Terrorist deaths dropped by almost a half. (For some reason, I screwed this item up yesterday.)

“My two boys were adopted, each at seven. They were raised with prayer every night and most mornings until they were fifteen. They grew up heterosexual and are both married. They adore me and my monogamous spouse. So do our grandkids.

Some “religious” conservatives, who could be very sympathetic to the heterosexuals that dumped these boys into the world, rail against those of us who took them and continue to sacrifice for the kids. Some even wanted to take my sons away from me, and they could have when being gay was criminal.

Thank you for protecting my family!” – more fresh feedback on the Letters Page.

The hotel which was the inspiration for John Cleese’s genius sit-com has been saved from demolition. The hazing of guests will apparently continue.

As he often does, the incomparable Jon Rauch homes in on the central distortion in the current discussion of the Iraq war:

Iraq is ridden with hindsight bias. For instance, the Bush administration should have — must have — seen the gaps in its prewar intelligence (they are pretty evident now). And the notion that the occupation could be run with a few divisions — how naive was that? And wasn’t it obvious that the military would need to patrol the streets from the day the war ended?

Hindsight bias raises false expectations and nurtures conspiracy theories. Perhaps worst, it leads to ricocheting errors as people look backward through distorted lenses and then overcompensate looking ahead.

War critics who today revel in hindsight bias might do well to recall an earlier instance: the claim that the first President Bush’s failure to march to Baghdad and unseat Saddam was a gross error. It was not. In early 1991, the smart money was on Saddam’s soon being toppled, and the first Bush wanted to avoid precisely the sort of ugly occupation that the second Bush now finds himself conducting. The second war grew partly from hindsight bias in evaluations of the first.

The solution is pragmatic muddling through. That’s what Condi is now trying to coordinate. It’s the essence of good government. And we have many months to judge its effects – with as little hindsight bias as possible.

Some at the Los Angeles Times are not too happy this morning.

The French establishment is rattled by this thing called “democracy.” Le Monde’s editorial today – from the front-page headline, “Danger Californien – continues, highmindedly:

“California is known for its capacity to innovate. Every new trend from Los Angeles or San Francisco generally ends up crossing the American continent from west to east, and then the Atlantic. The trend launched on Tuesday October 7 is worrisome. . . . [Mr. Schwarzenegger’s substance doesn’t worry us.] No, it’s the process that led to “Arnie’s” victory that should worry us. Here’s a state with 35 million people and a GDP about the size of France’s. . . . And yet here’s a state where, at a cost of millions of dollars, voters can dismiss a sitting governor barely eleven months after his election. . . . Laboratory of the United States, California has been no less a testing ground for democracy itself over these past 20 years: more and more, by means of referendums and “citizens’ initiatives,” direct democracy has stolen a march on representative democracy. Thus Mr. Schwarzenegger, like his predecessor, will have his hands tied with respect to something like 70% of the state budget on account of constraints imposed by successively restrictive referendums. This state of affairs results, to be sure, from the electorate’s distrust of the political establishment. Schwarzenegger’s populist victory is but a further illustration of this point.

Some of these points, are, of course, valid. But one of the pleasures of this victory is watching the Europeans squirm, harrumph, and privately marvel.

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, I ask a simple question: in terms of gay rights, what are Republicans for?