Year: 2003

How intensely disappointing to find some fiscal conservative aparently whining about the money needed to rebuild Iraq. Don’t they understand what is at stake here? A successful outcome in that poor country is vital for the strategic success of the war on terror and terror-states. Penny-pinching in that context is about as counter-productive and self-defeating a policy as can be imagined. You want to ensure costly military spending for decades in the Middle East? Then short-change the Marshall Plan in Iraq. Between some Democratic candidates’ neo-isolationism and the Republicans’ waking up to fiscal discipline on the one project the world desperately needs, it’s hard not to get truly depressed these days. Of course, this money should be scrutinized. But if the Republicans won’t back the president up on this, who will?

If you heard me debate Dennis Prager today on his radio show and want to read the written dialogue posted earlier this year, here it is.

You read about the collapse of the BBC here first. Now, even the NYT is conceding it. It’s a decent article, marred only by citing Will Hutton as some kind of objective source. He’s the British Paul Krugman. But without all that Enron money.

THE OTHER FRENCH: I’ve been criticized (and rightly, perhaps) for focusing too much on France’s reflexive anti-Americanism. But of course not all of France is that decadent or unthoughtful. A blogger elaborates. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

GILLESPIE’S FALLACY: There’s some strange thinking going on among the social right about homosexuality, marriage and civil rights. Here’s the RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie:

This is an issue that was made an issue by the proponents of gay marriage and their advocacy of gay marriage… those in favor of gay marriage seem to indicate that tolerance is no longer defined by my accepting people for who they are… I accept people for who they are and love them. That doesn’t mean I have to agree or that I have to turn my back on the tenets of my faith and reject the tenets of my faith when it comes to homosexuality. I think when people say, well, no, that is not enough, it is not enough that you accept me for who I am, you have to agree with and condone my choice. That to me is religious bigotry and I believe that is intolerance and I think they are the ones who are crossing a line here…

But the point of equal marriage rights is not that individuals want Gillespie or anyone else to be forced to approve or condone our “evil” relationships (I use the Vatican’s adjective). It’s just that in a diverse society, there are bound to be all sorts of things of which we disapprove but which we accept because we are, well, a diverse and pluarlistic society. I don’t like arranged marriages. But I wouldn’t want to ensure that they are denied civil licenses. Gillespie, as a Catholic, presumably opposes second mariages, like that of Ronald Reagan. And yet he lives in a country where what the Vatican calls “evil” (the Reagans’ marriage) is legal and civilly valid. Because Gillespie accepts legal divorce as a citizen doesn’t mean he is being forced to approve of it as a private person or as a Catholic. Would he say that the supporters of civil divorce are religious bigots for promoting something that is anathema to the Church? I doubt it. So why the double standard for gay marriage? Hmmm. Maybe he doesn’t actually “accept people for the way they are.” Maybe if they’re gay, he thinks they have fewer civil rights and less dignity than if they’re straight.

Josh Claybourne has discovered a classic.

POSEUR ALERT: “Borridori: September 11 [Le 11 Septembre] gave us the impression of being a major event, one of the most important historical events we will witness in our lifetime, especially for those of us who never lived through a world war. Do you agree?

Derrida: Le 11 Septembre, as you say, or, since we have agreed to speak two languages, “September 11.” We will have to return later to this question of language. As well as to this act of naming: a date and nothing more. When you say “September 11” you are already citing, are you not? Something fait date, I would say in French idiom, something marks a date, a date in history. “To mark a date in history” presupposes, in any case, an ineffaceable event in the shared archive of a universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal calendar, for these are – and I want to insist on this at the outset – only suppositions and presuppositions. For the index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. The telegram of this metonymy – a name, a number – points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about.” – from “Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida,” by Giovanna Borridori. Excerpted in the latest Harper’s magazine.

The only cogent response I’ve heard from my post yesterday about the Clark/Kerry position on the war is that we should have pulled back in February and sent in more inspectors before launching a war without U.N. support. If that’s Clark’s position, I think he should say so. What it would have left intact, of course, was Saddam’s monstrous regime, and because he successfully hid or froze his WMD program, a clean bill of health from Mr Blix or a successor. Would we have maintained sanctions under those circumstances? That’s another question Clark and Kerry need to answer. I can’t see how we could have in the medium and long run – at least on moral grounds. So how could we be assured that Saddam would not have been emboldened by the triumph of his allies in the U.N. and re-started his WMD program or upped his financing of terrorism in the Middle East and here? These were our actual options. I still strongly think Bush picked the right one. If you are going to criticize the war, you need to say what you would have done instead. And you also need to say what you would do differently now. Leave the country to the hands of Saddamites again? Hand it over to the U.N. and watch another genocide take place? Again, it’s time the critics of Bush tell us what they’re for. If not war in March, then what? If not sanctions, what? If not nation-building now, then what?

THOSE EVIL DRUG COMPANIES: An interesting post on a great blog on the latest anti-HIV drug, T-20. If you think new drugs are expensive because of drug companies’ greed, read this. And if you think HIV research won’t be clobbered by the proposed policies of candidates like Howard Dean, read it twice.

Here’s a smart email:

In considering the retrospective debate which has emerged regarding the war in Iraq, the left and right of the Western political spectrum are obviously talking past each other. This stunted communication results from the inability of each side to simultaneously apprehend both the *substantive* and *procedural* elements of the war in Iraq and the events leading thereto. The anti-war left has proven to be comically ineffective in countering the basic point that the war has set the stage for an infinitely improved society in Iraq and has removed a dangerous and tyrannical despot. They stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the positive *substantive* result of the war.

On the other hand, the right has not been willing to recognize legitimate critiques of the *process* by which war was effectuated. The right generally will not respond to charges that the WMD threat was distorted, that the human rights justification only became a prominent one retrospectively, and that the Bush Administration’s bellicose tone in the international arena prevented the successful utilization of coalition forces in either the waging or aftermath of combat operations. Instead, they focus on the *substantive* success of the war, and pretend that the means by which these undoubtedly moral results were achieved matters not.

Here’s where I disagree. It seems to me that in retrospect, the WMD issue in Iraq was distorted, but it isn’t at all clear to me that this was deliberate. Virtually no one before the war actually agreed with Saddam that he had no WMDs (or had successfully put his program into cold storage). And the burden of proof was on Saddam to prove he didn’t have them, not on the West to prove he did. I also disagree with the notion that the human rights justification was only used retrospectively. In fact, Tony Blair made it his most forceful argument in the final weeks before the war. Re-reading my own case for war in Time last February, I see a mix of moral, strategic and WMD reasons for war. In fact it was the first reason I cited in the concluding paragraph for going to war. Those moral reasons for the war, combined with Saddam’s violation of umpteen U.N. resolutions, still stand. They will fail, however, if we do not see this through. Which is, of course, what the anti-war forces are now trying retroactively to achieve. (More feedback on the Letters Page.)

WHO RATTED ON BURNS? I asked this question a while back. In John F. Burns’ extraordinary indictment of the Western media’s fellatial relationship to Saddam, he actually claimed a fellow reporter printed up other reporters’ stories alongside his own and sent them to Saddam’s Ministry of Information to show what a good boy he was. It seems to me that this reporter should be exposed, and indeed the whole matter explored by the press. No one has followed up – surprise! – presumably because a) almost all the reporters opposed the liberation of Iraq and b) few were innocent of sucking up to Saddam. Jack Shafer has finally unloaded on this scandal that is being buried by the press corps. Jack writes: “I’m certain that the accused reporter’s readers would like to know his identity, and I’m fairly certain his editors would, too. I stop short of accusing Burns’ colleagues of silent complicity in a cover-up, but not by much.” I’m not stopping short at all. Will Saddam’s biggest suck-up please come forward?

“Belgium’s highest court dismissed war crimes complaints Wednesday against former U.S. President George W. Bush, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ruling the country no longer has a legal basis to charge them.” – Associated Press, reprinted on CNN earlier today. Former U.S. President George W. Bush? Only in CNN’s dreams.

WORSE THAN CLINTON?: “Relentlessness is Clark’s greatest virtue, also his greatest flaw. Speaking to a NEWSWEEK reporter on the night he announced his candidacy, Clark did not want to let go until he was sure the reporter understood him – not just understood him, but respected him, believed him, appreciated him, liked him. Clark quivered with a desire to please. He tapped his feet, jiggled his knee, leaned forward, his bright eyes searching imploringly. “Am I being too theoretical?” he asked. “I want to make sure I answer all your questions,” he insisted, two hours into an interview into which he had touched on Plato, the higher calling of the soldier-statesman, the art of persistent diplomacy and, in Clark’s view, the many failings of the Bush presidency.” – from Evan Thomas’ somewhat brutal account of the character and career of Wesley Clark.

“I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.” – General Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the maverick soldier now running for the presidency.

A useful round-up from the AP. Money quote:

Clark also was cautious about plunging into battle after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when many Americans were out for vengeance. Three days after the attacks, he counseled this response: “It’s fundamentally a police effort against individuals. It’s not a military effort directed against factories and airfields. You may still need to use military force, but you have to use it in a very precise way.” It became a huge military effort to uproot the government of Afghanistan and the terrorist network it harbored. Clark seemed to swing behind the strategy once it was set, and he voiced confidence in the outcome.

It seems to me that this gets to a very important issue in the debate. Is our fight against terrorism a “police operation” or a war? Clark wants the former, although he waxed lyrical about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time. Now, of course, he is full of criticism. If Clark’s candidacy can help us focus on this critical question – policing or war – then it will be a good thing.

Which real Californian wouldn’t vote for someone with a body as good as that?

CLARK/KERRY’S CASE: Let’s put the best gloss on Wesley Clark’s ever-shifting position on the Iraq war and glean a coherent case within it. He would have voted for the Congressional Resolution – but only as a way to increase pressure for a diplomatic solution through the U.N. But wasn’t that Tony Blair’s position? Blair had all along preferred the U.N. route. He and Bush won an amazingly unanimous vote on the first resolution. He almost burst every blood vessel trying to get the Security Council to agree to the second. He wanted unanimous U.N. support precisely for the reasons Clark says he did as well – so as to avoid war. So what happened? He was double-crossed. The French declared that they would veto a second U.N. resolution promising war, regardless of what Saddam did. I’ve been reading the excellent inside account of the Blair government’s attempt to forge this middle way in the winter and early spring of this year. It’s revealing – not only about the good intentions of Blair but about the treachery and intransigence of Paris. The question for Clark and Kerry is therefore: where do you disagree with Blair? If Blair came to the conclusion that there was no way that the French were prepared to sign on to serious enforcement of 1441, why does Clark think otherwise? Is he simply saying that he would have had superior diplomatic skills and talked Chirac around? Superior to Blair’s and Powell’s? I think history will judge that there was no way on earth that France would ever have acceded to serious enforcement of 1441 by Western arms, under any circumstances. If that’s true, would Clark and Kerry have acceded to Paris and called the war off? If so, they should say so. But it would have been a huge blow to American credibility, deterrence and the war on terror. And since they favored the process whereby the French were given a veto, what exactly did the Bush administration do wrong? I wish I knew. I suspect these people are playing cheap rhetorical games in the midst of a dark and dangerous conflict. That alone casts doubt on their fitness to be president.