Year: 2003

To Pete Townshend’s pre-arrest anguish over pedophilia. Or this one.

Tony Blair’s defiant and inspiring refusal to appease Saddam or to minimize the risk of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction is beginning to have an effect. Check out this classic Guardian piece by Martin Kettle. It basically concedes the argument:

Most serious people will probably accept, separately, these three grim propositions: first, that we face an undefeated terrorist force which will take any opportunity to kill as many of us as possible at any time; second, that Saddam’s Iraq will develop any lethal weapons that it can and will use, or threaten to use, them if it possesses them; and, third, that our future security depends, among other things, on doing everything we sensibly can to prevent terrorists from acquiring lethal weapons of the kind which Iraq and others possess or would like to possess.

This is progress. It also means that one liberal writer in the Guardian has come to the conclusion that vast swathes of the anti-war left are simply not serious people. He’s right. Then the catch. Washington, according to Kettle, isn’t engaged in this strategy:

Washington’s attention is not on al-Qaida, as the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Richard Myers, admitted recently. On proliferation issues, the administration’s conscious rejection of multilateral approaches on everything from nuclear missiles to handguns is a given. The Middle East peace process is parked well off the highway, and America seems incapable of rational discussion of its own relationship with Israel. The drive against Iraq now has little context other than itself.

This strikes me as a very weak argument. What evidence is there that the U.S. is no longer serious about al Qaeda? Why would it even be in Bush’s interest to ignore it? On proliferation, the administration’s intent in North Korea (even if one disagrees about methods) couldn’t be clearer. And Israel? Why is that relevant here? The good news from this piece is that finally – finally! – some people on the left seem to have grasped that the Saddam-al Qaeda combination is simply something no sane Western government can tolerate. The mere possibility of it should be enough to stir action. But the loathing of Bush and American power then clouds the judgment. But why should it? If Blair is right, shouldn’t the Brits be begging the U.S. to wage war on their and Europe’s behalf? Shouldn’t the Germans and French as well? There comes a point at which anti-Americanism is also anti-Europeanism, in as much as it threatens the security and future of all of Europe. I hope it doesn’t take a calamity before the Europeans understand this.

Here’s a piece that surely deserves wider attention. It’s by Pete Townshend (although I have no independent corroboration, it seems convincingly by him to me) and seems genuinely concerned about child porn. I’m not sure it completely exonerates Townshend, but it certainly adds support for the notion that his case may be a complex one and his self-defense may be true. It ends thus:

The subconscious mind is deeply damaged and indelibly scarred by the sight of such images. I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in pursuit of images of paedophilic rape they will find them. I urge them not to try. I pray too that they don’t happen upon such images as did I, by accident. If they do they may like me become so enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted.

Circumstantial evidence, paranoia, denial, and as so often before with Le Carre, pathological hatred of America.

Like many people, I’ve long since given up on reading most of the editorials in the New York Times. Unlike those in the Washington Post, they don’t seem designed to persuade anyone. They posture and preen and pronounce. But they don;t seem intended to engage. Last Sunday’s, however, stood out for its shrillness. I’m not the only one to notice this, but it’s been bugging me in an inchoate way all week. Entitled “The War Against Women,” the editorial is a hysterical attempt to assert that the Bush administration harbors contempt for women as a group of people, and wants to eviscerate their rights and standing before the law. Does anyone not on the far left think the administration’s motives are as simple and malevolent as that? Almost the entire thrust of the screed, however, is directed to the subject of abortion and the Bush administration’s modest moves to tighten government support for abortion and limit some of the more extreme examples of it. With the exception of the attempt to ban partial birth abortion, a barbaric practice that appears to be on the rise, I’m actually quite sympathetic to the Times’ substantive position. It’s dismaying to see the White House sign onto the far right’s propaganda campaign against condoms, and to favor ineffective abstinence programs at the expense of sensible sex education. But after a perusal of the Times’ rhetoric, it’s hard not to leap to the administration’s defense.

“ANTI-CHOICE”: On abortion itself, any objective view would find that women themselves are conflicted about the subject, as any human being should be. To frame this debate, then, as something as violent as a “war” against all women is simply boilerplate. Worse, it seems cribbed almost verbatim from Planned Parenthood’s activist hype. The notion that Roe vs Wade is on the brink of extinction is also, by any reasonable measure, hyperbole. It’s about as settled a part of constitutional law as you can imagine. Then there’s the constant use of the term “anti-choice.” Politics is strewn on all sides by this kind of sloganeering and you can see the rhetorical pleasure it must provide. But as a tool of persuasion, it couldn’t be weaker. I’m very reluctantly in favor of legal first trimester abortion, but I still find abortion horrifying, immoral, and wrong, and would seek to limit it in other circumstances. Does that make me “anti-choice”? Or engaged in a war against women? If the pro-choice movement wants to make friends rather than enemies, it should see how its rhetoric is seriously wounding its cause rather than helping it. And the Times should start treating its readers as engaged adults rather than as feckless and brainless children.

An interesting view from the outside of the war debates now raging in D.C. and elsewhere from Ian Buruma. He captures one dimension of the debate very ably, I think:

My point is that the neo-conservatives today, as far as Iraq is concerned, are the idealists, and if their revolutionary ideals have any chance of succeeding, they will have to prevail over the realists, the oil men and the country-club Republicans, who will surely stand in their way. The irony here is that what is left of the left, on the whole, shares the views of the old right. Few believe in a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and even fewer think it is up to America to enforce it.

That is, indeed, what is left of the left: a kind of passive reactionaryism, buoyed by resentment and bitterness.

LETTERS:“If the President doesn’t move on Iraq, as looks increasingly likely, I won’t vote for him. I know many who feel the same way. And, as today’s news suggests, if Lieberman runs to the right of Bush on the war, I’ll hold my nose and vote for him. Mark my words, as I marked yours months ago: Saddam will be in Baghdad in 2004, and Lieberman will be in the White House, and still the oh-so-intelligent conservative crowd won’t have a clue.” – more on the Letters Page.

I thought I’d be going out of my mind here at the end of the Cape in the dead of winter. The boyfriend has returned to academic duties; the tourists are non-existent; there are only a handful of restaurants open; and the cold is bitter. But walking the beagle tonight, it was hard not to hear the stillness. Not a car in earshot; no-one on the streets; most of the stores boarded up; the same handful of people at the gym each evening. In most places, you never hear silence like this, let alone live in it day after day. Some days, I must speak to a mere five or six people. And at night, this old house I’m subletting groans with the expanding water-pipes, its shutters banging against shingles in the wind. One room, I’m convinced, is haunted. Even the beagle won’t sleep there – and she’ll happily sleep almost anywhere. Only a block away, a couple of nor-easters have had their way with the beach; the tides have been huge, sweeping completely underneath my summer wharf-home, carving new little valleys around the wooden pilings in the sand. The beagle won’t even venture out of the dunegrass in the wind in this weather, with the sand blasting her little face, and the wind blowing her ears out like sails. But it’s a great break from urban routine. The blog makes me feel as if I’m in the middle of things – the hundreds of emails chatter back at me each day as if I were still in D.C. But the rest of the day is formless – reading books, working on an essay, throwing myself into intense work-outs, eating microwave popcorn and re-heated frozen food in front of a wood fire each night, occasionally visiting a friend for supper. The solitude, in other words, has yet to become loneliness. And the quiet slowly becomes a narcotic, wrapping itself around you until you can’t imagine hearing anything more. This is the way we all used to live long ago, isn’t it? Maybe when we could hear ourselves think.

This piece about our policy toward North Korea is extremely helpful. (Via Instapundit.)

You know, this guy thinks he’s being real clever.

THE MEDIA ON BUSH’S PLAN: Forget the hilarious average New York Times couple (liberal activists who can’t add) bemoaning “trickle down economics.” Forget the relentless negative coverage. Isn’t the Times’ latest statement that social security and payroll taxes “account for almost as much money as federal income tax revenue, but they hit middle-income and lower-income workers much more heavily than the rich,” wildly misleading?

No surprise that Hans Blix wants more time; that January 27 is now seen as the “beginning” of the arms inspection; or that other countries are quite happy to see the process drawn out indefinitely. This was always the danger of the U.N. route. The administration, as is its wont, seems to be saying almost nothing about its plans, which worries people like me. We can only hope that its a way to out-psyche Saddam. But it’s beginning to look like Saddam is out-psyching Bush. The question will therefore soon arise: can we wait until the autumn? My own view is that this would be a disaster. There is absolutely no guarantee that any weapons of mass destruction will be found by Blix’s merry men by then; and the long summer and fall will be a golden opportunity for other rogue states to take advantage of the U.S.’s preoccupation in the Gulf. Those who oppose the war now will oppose it then. And there will be further opportunities for terrorist attacks on the West. Moreover, nothing would galvanize our enemies more than to see how timorous Washington is when dealing with a murderous dictator who has violated the terms of the 1991 truce and continues to thumb his nose at the world. Our perceived weakness toward Saddam has already emboldened the North Koreans (whom it appears we are now willing to appease as well). It will embolden others – from the meddlesome French to the American left. What Bush is in danger of drifting into is Clintonism – dragged along by events, rather than determining them, acquiescing in evil rather than confronting it, and coming ever so close to appearing easily knocked off course. That hasn’t happened yet. But the danger signs are there. Saddam was right. Time is on his side. As we wait and wait for a conclusion we cannot even know will come, the anti-war lobby in this country will gain strength; and the remarkable success we have so far enjoyed in preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack will merely serve to lull Americans into another false sense of security. I’m not panicking – yet. But a question keeps nagging: Are we at war or not? If we are, when on earth are we going to get serious?

A GOOD SIGN: This letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association is both reassuring and a little unnerving. A patient treated with radioactive iodine was picked up and strip-searched twice by the cops in the New York subway. Translation: they’re monitoring New York City for radioactivity. I’ve long believed a dirty bomb of some sort is just a matter of time. So it’s good to see the authorities have made some preparation.

IS GRAHAM A GO? The latest report suggests he might be. He could be a really strong candidate – especially as veep.

UNDER-ESTIMATING INTEGRATION?: Fascinating story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that suggests our old stereotypes about profound racial residential segregation – especially in the MidWest, Northeast and South – may be based on a fallacy. By analyzing racial integration block by block rather than by census tract, a new study finds far more racial mixing than previously thought. Encouraging, no? Or is there a catch here?

THE ACCIDENT OF EMPIRE: Nice review of my old friend Niall Ferguson’s latest TV series on the British empire by William Rees Mogg in the Times (London). The key to imperial power? Luck and happenstance:

Empires come into existence, or grow, largely in response to threats or problems. All empires, in the benefits they provide and the damage they do, reflect the culture of the whole nation. The French were unlucky in that their early empire was pre-revolutionary, before France had developed democracy or freedom of trade or speech. The English were luckier that their empire was substantially post-revolutionary; almost all of it was acquired after the Civil War, and most of it after the revolution of 1688. The Americans have been luckiest of all, in that their empire came after the War of Independence and the Civil War. The US empire really started in 1898, with the war in Cuba against Spain. The new American empire is global and powerful, but technologically advanced, liberal and democratic. As the British Empire dwindled and disappeared, an essentially benign American empire has helped to secure the stability of a very vulnerable world.

Yes – worth remembering that in the face of the usual far-left blather: “essentially benign.”