Year: 2003

Econopundit takes me to task for worrying about the deficit. Then he runs the numbers on how he thinks the economy would have performed without the tax cut. But he’s debating a straw man. I never said I blamed the tax cut! I love the tax cut. What I blame is the spending increases. Nevertheless, I’m struck that, on his models, the tax cut only marginally helps the economy while doing enormous damage to the deficit. Hmmm. I don’t think he intend to persuade me to be less worried about Dean, but he did. If this is the best the budget-busters can do, I’m unimpressed.

Now is surely the time to bring Turkey into the EU and to reassure them of our solidarity. Their secular state is a critical source of hope for democracy in the Middle East and a vital ally in the war on terror. Here’s a hopeful but grim report in the Guardian:

This was Istanbul’s September 11. They thought they were safe from the war on terror because they thought all Muslims were brothers. Now they know otherwise, and are unified in their condemnation of the terrorists, who cannot be “true Muslims”. The fact that the terrorists staged this attack in the last days of Ramadan has added to their outrage. But no one is in any doubt why the city has become a terrorist target. How its residents respond to their new status depends very much on how much support they get (or fail to get) from the allies who dragged them into this. As one shopkeeper put it, “Surely, now that we have suffered this, the EU must open its arms to us.” If it doesn’t, or if the US gives the impression, as it has sometimes done in the past, that it is taking Turkey’s “sacrifice” for granted, the sense of betrayal could be huge… As we sit drinking coffee around the corner from the British consulate, gazing calmly at yet another high-sided vehicle that could be carrying 500lbs of cheap explosives, my brother has difficulty keeping up the front. No matter how hard he tries, his memories of the first and nearest bomb keep crowding into his mind. The worst part was seeing the dead in the street and recognising their faces. He tells me about the disembodied hand he saw sticking out of a mound of broken glass. He can’t help wondering if this was the hand that detonated the bomb that killed his neighbourhood. “It’s not just politics,” he says. “They’re attacking our way of life.”

Yes, they are. And the fight back has just begun.

Here’s a story that gives you some idea of the huge task still ahead in Iraq. The new recruits to the Iraqi police and civil defense corps are loathed by their fellow-countrymen in the Sunni Triangle. They risk death every day doing their job. Only money keeps them in uniform. How on earth will they become loyal to a new Iraqi government that does not represent Sunni privilege? I don’t know. Here’s my worry, and it can be summed up in a simple dialogue from the piece:

“Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam,” Wathban said. “The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here.”

The fact that this can still be believed is deeply worrying. It seems clear now that Saddam has played a simple, clever game: instead of fighting conventionally, he simply withdrew his forces and went into hiding; now he plays a game of guerrilla harassment until the U.S. wearies and pulls out; then he makes another bid for power, in league with Islamists and terrorists of all stripes. In order to keep this from happening, we have to stay in Iraq in considerable numbers for a decade or so. And we have to convince the Iraqis that we mean it. I still don’t believe that this administration is intent on premature withdrawal. But I do know we still have a hell of a job ahead of us – in the Sunni Triangle at least. I know it’s early days yet, but the president needs to speak to the public at some point in ways that acknowledge more deeply the long, hard slog we face. And the huge dangers we have yet to encounter on the way.

DIGGING IN THE IRAQI SAND: Funny what you might find there. Like a whole Russian MiG. I wonder what else they buried.

MORE PALESTINIAN TOYS: It gets better, doesn’t it? Then take a look at the photographs of the mass graves from Saddam’s Iraq. Two sides of the same, awful story.

THE BLOG ANTIDOTE: Reading the New York Times every day. I mean, all the New York Times.

Britain will tomorrow unveil proposed legislation to give gay couples much of the civil protections of heterosexual marriage. The British Tory party has shifted its position to acceptance, and will allow its MPs to vote however they want to on the matter. Their spokesman, Alan Duncan, is himself openly gay (and an old friend from college days). Here is a simple argument in defense of this proposition:

We understand the reservations several Church leaders have expressed about extending this civil union into some sort of pastiche gay marriage, which would be in breach of so much Judaeo-Christian teaching. But that is a religious issue. What is proposed is a civil matter. It is wrong to oppose a sensible and modest civil reform for fear of where it will ultimately lead. Allowing gay people to affirm their relationship within a civil contract does not undermine the institution of marriage. It might even reinforce it. We will all benefit from greater recognition of stable relationships, of whatever kind.

This is from the Daily Telegraph, the most conservative serious newspaper in Britain, in an editorial titled, “Gay couples should be equal under the law.” I’m beginning to feel as if the substance of this issue is now over. In the Weekly Standard, Maggie Gallagher argues against banning civil unions or other such protections for gay couples in a constitutional amendment. We’re left with a dispute over who gets to use the term “marriage.” That debate is worthwhile and important. I want to unify our civil society and strengthen marriage by bringing gays and straights under its single umbrella with a single name. I think that gay members of a family should not be put into a separate holding pen as if their relationships are somehow inferior to their siblings. But it seems to me that the real substantive matter is whether we encourage gay relationships (as opposed to no support for stability among gays) and whether homosexuals are equal under the civil law. A new consensus seems to be forming in defense of both arguments, which is really gratifying. It’s particularly gratifying that many conservatives are finally intent on bringing gay people into the civil architecture of our society.

BART SIMPSONS IN BRITAIN: From the aptly named blog, ourpointlesslives. Sound effects can be found here.

Here’s yet another damning indictment of the Republicans on pork-barrel spending. Yes, it’s produced by the Democrats, but no one is disputing the data. The practice of adding “earmarks” to bills that include pet domestic projects has also exploded under the GOP. Check out the graphic. And this is the minor stuff! Compared the the energy bill and the Medicare expansion, it’s peanuts.

Amending the Constitution and opposing equal marriage rights are, of course, two very separate matters. But David Horowitz is not easily described as – ahem – a flaming lefty. And he sees that the idea of using the Constitution to resolve highly contentious social issues is a radical idea – and one that the left will use with abandon. Money quote:

Not since the Civil War has the American political system been so polarized, or America’s communities engaged in so comprehensive a cultural Armageddon. In this national hour of crisis, the binding force of the Constitutional framework is more critical then ever.
-Now comes a movement, calling itself conservative but emulating these very radicals in taking the cultural war into the heart of foundational framework, attempting to rewrite the Constitution (albeit by due process) in order to achieve its political goals. I am referring to the movement for a Federal Marriage Amendment that seeks to take an institution previously under the jurisdiction of the states and federalize it; that seeks to take an institution now contested as part of the culture war, and define it constitutionally as a way of resolving the conflict. In other words, it is a movement to achieve a Roe v. Wade decision in reverse.

The alternative is good old-fashioned federalism – allowing one state to try it out first and see what happens. Settled constitutional law, the federal Defense of Marriage Act and 37 state mini-DOMAs ensure that one state’s marriages cannot be applied to another. And when the only state with gay marriage has a popular majority in favor of the reform, you cannot even use the conservative argument against judicial activism to oppose it. Why not give Massachusetts a chance?

Ryan Sager makes an awful lot of sense in the New York Sun.

Their paleo response to the Medicare bill is truly depressing. There are many reasons to oppose this bill – most importantly that it wll destroy the remaining threads of fiscal hope. But to oppose even experimentation with cost-cutting reforms reveals a party completely bankrupt of new ideas. Then to watch the Dems rake in the pork on the Hooters bill reminds you again of all the reasons you don’t trust Democrats with the national government. But … and it’s a big but … the Republicans’ victories are at the price of something else, as Joe Klein points out. The GOP has now no crediibility as a party of fiscal discipline or small government. It’s just another tool of special interests – as beholden to them as the Dems are to theirs. Its pork barrel excesses may now be worse than the Dems, and the president seems completely unable or unwilling to restrain them. I know I’m a broken record on this but we truly need some kind of third force again in American politics – fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, and vigilant against terror. Last week has shown us why.

SAFIRE WEIGHS IN: It’s something of a new media coup when such an old media maven as Bill Safire refers to two online pieces in his New York Times column. And it’s a victory for online media that the Saddam-al Qaeda story hasn’t been left to die. It’s one of the most important of the last ten years. Why aren’t the papers throwing all their investigative resources into figuring it out?

DEAN AND THE WEB: It’s the real innovation of this campaign year. What it means we don’t yet know. But it’s a big deal. Here’s why.

Frank Rich is using AIDS again as a political football. Time out.

JUDICIAL TYRANNY? Two polls in the immediate wake of the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts reverse some assumptions in the current debate about the role of courts. Clear majorities in polls commissioned by both the Herald and the Globe support the court’s ruling. Overwhelming majorities support the substance of the ruling – equal benefits for gay couples under civil unions (without the “m-word”). It should be recalled that the Massachusetts legislature had a chance to amend the constitution and didn’t; and that they still can do so if they want. So let the voters and representatives in Massachusetts do what they want. What a federal Constitutional Amendment would now mean is that Massachusetts would effectively be denied the right to do as it sees fit in an area always reserved for states. It seems to me this would violate pretty basic federalist principles. Isn’t it a perfect solution to let one state try this out for a while? Such marriages will not be transportable, and I have come to believe that that is a good thing for the time being. Of course, if Massachusetts should be left alone, so should Mississippi. In a country as diverse and as divided as this one, we need federalism more than ever. In wartime, when we need a cultural war like we need a hole in the head, that applies more than ever.

The author squirms.

RALL FOR DEAN: The man who urges armed resistance to American troops puts his support behind Dean. Dean’s blog celebrates, but that doesn’t mean Dean should. At some point, Dean should Sister Souljah someone like Rall. At some point, he’ll have to.

PUNTING ON DURANTY: I despair. Arthur Sulzberger Jr describes the work of Walter Duranty as “slovenly.” That simply misses the point. Duranty wasn’t slovenly; he was an active and knowing apologist of mass murder, tyranny, and brutality. If the Times had won a Pulitzer for someone denying the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, there would not even be a question of the Pulitzer standing. But what Duranty did was no different. It was a wilful attempt to disguise mass murder in order to promote Communist ideology. It wasn’t slovenly; it was extremely diligent and entirely malign. The NYT doesn’t see this. They still fail to see that tolerating mass murder on the left is no different than the same on the right. For good measure, here’s Roger Kimball’s take.