Year: 2003

Here’s how the British newspaper, the Independent, reported the arrest of the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of espionage. In this age of terrorism, everyone is innocent except the U.S. government. Notice especially the invocation of Lynne Stewart.

“The recent 9/11 anniversary, with its replays of those devil-driven jets, careening at top speed into the World Trade Towers, made me think again of what those passengers must have endured. It is such a heart-searing image that the mind cannot linger on it for long.
But at times I feel a similar helplessness, as if our whole country is hurtling toward disaster, the cockpit commandeered by a proud and zealous crew that won’t listen and won’t change course.
Like the passengers in three of those four jets, we’re frozen in our seats, obeying the unwritten protocols of captivity.
But then I remember the passengers in the fourth jet, the one thought to have been headed for Washington, D.C. They didn’t stay strapped in their seats. They had the onerous advantage of learning by cell phone what had happened to the towers and to the Pentagon, and they had the time — and the courage — to act. They stormed the cockpit and lost their lives, but undoubtedly saved hundreds of others, and probably the symbolic heart of the nation.” – Susan Lenfesty, comparing the Bush administration to the mass murderers of 9/11.

This one is revealing. It’s from Eric Schmitt’s account of Paul Wolfowitz’s appearance at the New School. Here’s the passage:

When pressed by Mr. Goldberg and audience members, some of these justifications seemed less certain. “Iraq did have contacts with Al Qaeda,” Mr. Wolfowitz insisted, momentarily silencing the audience with an accusation even President Bush now says is unsubstantiated. He added, “We don’t know how clear they were.”

Notice the condescension. Now notice the inaccuracy. President Bush has never said that Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda. This is the new anti-war shibboleth, loyally parroted by Schmitt as if it were true. (It’s the same as the notion that the president once claimed that the threat from Iraq was imminent. He didn’t. But in the anti-war mind, he must have.) All the president conceded was that there was no hard evidence of Saddam’s connection to 9/11. (There is, of course, much hard evidence that Saddam was involved in the first WTC attack.) Even the BBC has conceded as much. Nothing Wolfowitz is reported to have said conflicted with this. Now: an interesting test of Keller’s New York Times. Will they run a correction of their reporter’s egregious anti-war bias? (Belgravia Despatch beat me to the punch on this one.)

I bumped into a few of my many lefty friends this weekend, who were almost all enthusiastic about Wesley Clark. I was particularly amused by the far-left counter-cultural National Gay Lesbian Task Force getting solidly behind a general who almost started World War III with the Russians. None of them cared much about Clark’s actual positions, however. All they cared about is his perceived ability to win. One explained that the white-hot rage at Bush had now tippled over into a cold determination to beat him, by whatever means necessary. I have to say I respect this kind of political argument. But it also strikes me that the left really cannot criticize Bush as a cipher for other forces aligned behind him, when they are doing exactly the same with a general they view as a purely Potemkin figure. “Look, if it means we get Gene Sperling and Robert Rubin running the country again, I don’t much care who they put up as a front-man,” one partisan gleefully explained. All of this reminds me of Bill Kristol’s flirtation with Colin Powell as a Republican candidate a few years back. Why the Powell boomlet? He was black and could win. Er, that was it. Powell was a cipher to innoculate the Republicans from seeming too white-bread. Similarly, Clark is a perceived winner and a cipher to innoculate the Democrats from seeming … what, exactly? Unpatriotic? Weak on defense? Out of the cultural mainstream? Who knows? It all smacks of phoniness and opportunism to me. And it’s a clear sign that those who control big Democratic money are worried (I’m with Safire on that). If I were a Dem, it would make me want to vote for Dean even more. After all, what would be healthiest for the future of the Democrats – a party still run by principle-free sleazeballs like McAuliffe and the Clintons or one built up from the grass roots by people with passion and ideas?

CORRECTION: The person whom I quoted from memory above says he never used the term “front-man” to describe Wesley Clark. He says a more accurate rendition of his blind quote would be: “”If it means getting Robert Rubin and Gene Sperling back into power, who cares who gets them there?” He also denies he’s partisan. No, it wasn’t Sid Blumenthal.

UNSTEPFORD WIVES: Can America cope with Judith Steinberg and Teresa Heinz?

Geez, do we have an exit strategy yet? Four years later – four years later, president Clinton is telling the world we’ll stay there as long as it take to finish the job. The U.N. agrees. As a reader points out today, it’s just as well Clinton got U.N. Security Council backing for the war … oh, wait. Never mind.

MAKES ARNOLD LOOK LIKE A WONK: “Among the issues [Wesley Clark] told voters he was not ready to discuss in detail were health care, education, employment, AIDS in Africa, the USA Patriot Act and medical marijuana.” – from Saturday’s New York Times. At least he has had time to develop at least three different positions on the war.

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas,” – Senator Edward Kennedy, describing the Bush administration’s case for war.

“The president has never said that Saddam has the capability of striking the United States with atomic or biological weapons any time in the immediate future.” – Howard Dean, Face the Nation, September 29, 2002.

“Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” – president George Bush, State of the Union, 2003, clearly conceding that the threat from Saddam was not imminent.

“I’m really glad you and your beagle got to take a walk in the non-event of wherever it was you were that got brushed by Isabel, but I have a tree on my car, water in my living room, the neighbors got four feet of water in their place, my brother’s roof leaks, my parent’s car was completely smashed and the ceiling is bowed in the kitchen from accumulated rain, I have to boil my water, I just got my power back on a couple of hours ago, and half the rest of the state is still out of power. Yes, Virginia, there was a hurricane.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

BUSHITLER WATCH: “Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.” – Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times.

California brings gay couples closer to equality with straight ones. But why the state income tax exception? More evidence, to my mind, that civil unions are no alternative to marriage and actually perpetuate cultural balkanization and civic inequality. In another fascinating development, every single Democratic candidate has now come out formally in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment to bar any benefits or rights to gay couples. Such an amendment would effectively repeal Vermont’s and California’s civil unions, domestic partnerships and any benefits to gay couples under the law anywhere in the U.S. When a radical amendment of this kind is opposed by one of the two major parties, what chance does it have of garnering the overwhelming support needed?

BLAIR VERSUS THE DEMS: A revealing column by a good Blair observer, Andrew Rawnsley, suggests that the pilloried British Prime Minister is not going to change course, domestically or on Iraq in the near or even distant future. Particularly apposite to the debate among the Democrats, Blair will not countenance a tax hike for the wealthy – those earning over $160,000 a year. Why? Here’s why:

Blair disdains the notion, popular with quite a lot of his colleagues and not so long ago openly propounded by Peter Hain, that a new 50 per cent rate on those earning more than $100,000 a year would raise some useful revenue from an affluent but small slice of the voters. Would the electoral penalty really be that high? Blair is as emphatic as he has ever been that the penalty would be huge, and for the same reason as always: those earning less would believe that Labour was coming after them next. On this, at least, Downing Street insiders say that he and Gordon Brown are in complete agreement.

In Britain, at least, the DLC still has clout.

This is getting dizzying. See from this FAIR report, how many positions Wesley Clark has had on the Iraq war over the last twelve months. He changes his mind every five minutes. How can an anti-war candidate have been so pro-war at times? How can a man running against president Bush on the war have said so many laudatory things about the way Bush coordinated the conflict? To my mind, the most important thing about Clark is that he was a Rhodes Scholar. Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it. Hat-tip to Porphyrogenitus.

The Club for Growth is a fiscally conservative organization with links to all sorts of Republicans. Its president, Stephen Moore, is not a homophobe, by all accounts. But like many tolerant conservatives, he has to work and cooperate with people who cannot abide homosexuals and will not tolerate them in any positions of authority. So he fires a gay man in charge of a state chapter, after complaints from “pro-family” (i.e. anti-gay) groups and leaders. This isn’t a huge story in and of itself. But I think it does show how hard it is for any openly gay person to work or cooperate with much of the Republican apparatus. If you’re closeted, you can rise to the very, very top. If you’re honest and principled, you’re finished. These people insist they’re not prejudiced. They just support people who are.