Year: 2003

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.

I fully understand the frustration of many with U.S. and U.K. perseverance in the Security Council. But I do think it’s worth it. If, by some miracle, we get a majority and France vetoes, the impact will be huge for the worldwide legitimacy of the war and – just as importantly – for the marginalization of Paris. A few days is worth that effort, even if it fails. But more important, what matters is the appearance of effort. Bush and Blair’s speed-dialing their way around the globe has already flushed something valuable out: the French refusal to countenance any compromise that has a firm deadline for Iraqi disarmament. Blair was particularly smart to send this message out via the Tory leader, Iain Duncan-Smith, helping to rally Middle England behind Blair and against Chirac: “He made the reason for this as the fact that the French have become completely intransigent and literally threatened to veto anything that is put forward to the U.N. Security Council,” Duncan-Smith told the press. I think the British and American public will see this for what it is, and take some of the blame for war off the Anglo-American alliance. I think that’s one reason polls show a sharp uptick in American support for getting this war over with soon. Maybe the British polls will follow. My bet is that Blair will survive a successful war and that such an outcome could even strengthen his hand against the leftists in his party who are resisting real reform domestically. So a short delay is a good thing on the whole. Bush, as usual, is canny enough to see this. Rummy, as usual, isn’t.

Le Monde’s London correspondent pontificates about Chirac’s moral high-ground. But look at all the sensitivity about his country’s place in the world. And check out this admission:

Mr Chirac does not endorse Baghdad, and he finds Saddam’s regime as despicable as do Bush and Blair. But he fears the American hawks will ignite Muslim fundamentalism worldwide. The fear of domestic conflagration and terrorism are also ever-present: there are 6 million French Muslims to take into account.

No mention of the absurd idea that Saddam will disarm more effectively if pressured by Hans Blix rather than the American and British armed forces. Just the simple fact of yet more French appeasement and fear. But more to the point: I don’t think this mouthpiece for Paris realizes he probably added a few points to Blair’s approval ratings. This is becoming not just a war against Saddam but against his allies. Yes, his allies. The French.

MERCHANDIZING MERCHANT: Interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday on Natalie Merchant’s decision to use the web and her own reputation to promote music that would be hard to produce through the big record companies. It’s not exactly the right analogy, but it’s similar to what a few writers are beginning to do to reach readers unfettered by corporate pressure, editorial control or anything but their own freedom. I hope her example inspires others – and increases the musical diversity out there.

Interesting analysis from Charles Davis, former analyst of Soviet military and foreign policy for the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Intelligence Council (found via blogger Titusonenine). It was thinking about Castro that got him to re-evaluate Saddam:

My main reason for opposing war was that I believed that Saddam was deterred from using weapons of mass destruction as both the United States and Soviets were deterred during the Cold War. However, in reviewing the 1962 Cuba crisis, I found that when the United States was putting pressure on the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba in 1962, Castro was screaming at Moscow to launch a nuclear attack on the United States from Cuba — even though Castro knew that Cuba would have faced destruction from the U.S. response. This unnerved Khrushchev because he knew the conflict would then probably escalate to full-scale nuclear war. Khrushchev was perfectly willing to threaten to use nuclear weapons but was constrained from using them; Castro, however, would not have been so constrained had he had them.

Interesting to think of a Saddam constrained by the more rational Soviets. And chilling.

THE STOCK SURGE: Why? One view is from, natch, the New York Times: “Markets Rally as a U.N. Vote Is Delayed.” But Reuters, of all places, suggested another scenario: “Stocks Rally on Speculation of Short War.” Take your pick, I guess. But I suspect the latter. This waiting game can hardly be a tonic for investment. But a quick war could send the market soaring.

“The French rejected our tests before the Iraqis. Enough said.” – a British “official” talking to the New York Times. Yep. Enough said. Can we get Saddam now please?