Year: 2003

Salon’s Joan Walsh sounds somewhat despairing; millionaire socialist Katrina Vanden Heuvel puts the boot in for the Left; and this quote on ABC’s The Note (from a senior Democratic operative) is priceless:

I have read the accounts of the Clark interviews and my reaction is despair and anger. Why did my party’s best operatives think it would be a good idea to subject their neophyte candidate to the country’s savviest reporters for over an hour? Why have my party’s elders rallied around a candidate who is so shockingly uninformed about core issues and his own positions? I am not a Dean supporter – but I am angry that our party’s leaders have anointed an alternative to him who seems even more ignorant and unprepared – and that this supposed ‘anti-war’ candidate turns out to have been in favor of both the war resolution and Richard Nixon!! And let’s not even talk about the Clintons. Today I am embarrassed to be a Democrat.

The flip-flop on perhaps the most important political question for the Democratic field – where he would have stood on the Iraq War resolution – was and is pathetic. More pathetic, however, is the notion that the Dems really did think of this guy as their savior. Are they that weak on national security issues that a general – even as hapless as this one – is their only chance? What does that say about their own self-image? I’m beginning to think that Dean and Gephardt could be the real survivors here. But Dean has just had the worst of the Republican judgments about his electability confirmed by his own party establishment. That must hurt a little, no?

MARK, PROPHET: “Correction, Sept. 17, 2003: This article originally stated that Mark’s Gospel was written around 70 B.C.E. It was written around A.D. 70.” – Slate.

I’ll be defending the war on terror on the Chris Matthews show this weekend. It’s on NBC. And I’m in a suit! Hey. I’m forty now. I gotta look grown-up.

BETTER THAN EGGPLANTS: This made me laugh. For about 15 minutes.

The anti-war propaganda continues at the BBC, financed by tax-payers. Check out this array of opinions on the reasons for war against Iraq. Try and find a single pro-war voice out of dozens.

“The real threat isn’t some terrorists who can kill a few people now and then but are not fundamentally a threat to the continuation of America as I know it, but the internal challenge from very powerful domestic political forces who want to do away with America as I know it.” – Paul Krugman, NPR. (Thanks to Apostablog.)

And beagle went for a walk at the height of the storm. No rain; barely any wind. The boyfriend and I went over and back to a friend’s to watch bad TV. No rain; barely any wind. This was a hurricane? I guess I was really lucky.

CLARK ON THE WAR: Reading this essay by Wesley Clark, I have to say I’m not reassured that he has what it takes to wage a war on terror. If he had been president, the war in Afghanistan would probably not have taken place, let alone the war against Saddam. His first instinct after the deadliest act of war against the American heartland in history was to help the United Nations set up an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. I’m not even making that up. Maybe Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia could head up the committee. If I were to imagine a parody of what a Rhodes Scholar would come up with in such a moment, I’d be hard pressed to come up with something more perfect. His insistence throughout the piece is on process, process, process. Everything is seen through the prism of NATO’s Kosovo campaign, his one claim to military glory. Can you imagine having to get every special ops target in Afghanistan approved by 19 different countries, including those who opposed any action against the Taliban? Can you even begin to imagine constructing a case for any action in Iraq under similar auspices? It simply wouldn’t have happened. Which is the point. It’s important to remember that under the last administration, almost nothing happened to address the genocide in the Balkans until the genocide had taken place. Why? Because we needed a consensus from all the Europeans to even wipe our collective ass. And the Europeans couldn’t agree on anything in the 1990s. Have you noticed greater unanimity since? There’s also no sense in Clark’s essay about other agendas from our allies. It’s all very well to achieve maximum international consensus on every international action. But what if you cannot get it? What if you cannot get the U.N. even to live up to its own resolutions, let alone American priorities? What if a critical “ally”, like France, has a firm policy of thwarting American power – wherever and whenever it is waged? The notion that Bush created such a French policy is a fantasy. Clark’s foreign policy strikes me as an abdication of foreign policy. That was dangerous in the 1990s. It would be fatal now.

More details on Andrew Gilligan’s “reporting.” It’s looking worse – we could be headed for Jayson Blair territory here. On a broader note, an insider in London I trust tells me I’ve misjudged why this story has been such a big deal in Britain, and could still damage Blair. In Britain, the tradition has always been an extremely bright line between politics and intelligence agencies. Whereas in the U.S.. there’s competition and rivalry among various spy agencies, and an understanding that presidents and Congress may use different pieces of evidence to make their case, in Britain, this has historically not been the case. Intelligence is generally presented to the public straight from the agencies themselves or never presented at all. Blair’s “dossier” was therefore unique and unusual in British history. It didn’t doctor intelligence reports, but it sure did spin them to make the strongest case for war possible. In the U.S., that’s not exactly news. In Britain, it was and is, and has come to symbolize for many the obsessive concern with news management that has been a hallmark of the Blair premiership. That – and the fact that they didn’t experience 9/11 directly – helps explain why Blair has had to endure far worse Monday morning quarterbacking than Bush.

AND THE BATTLE BEGINS: A married Canadian couple have been refused entry to the United States because they refused to fill out immigration forms as separate, single people. Good for them. As marriage spreads throughout the West, this is going to become an even bigger problem. The U.S. is already a country that bans any foreigner with HIV from entering the country. We’re spending $15 billion on AIDS in Africa out of “compassionate conservatism” but won’t alloow a single African with HIV to visit here. Now the U.S. is going to keep gay people out, HIV or no HIV, – but only those who have decided to take responsibility for each other in marriage. (Thanks to DiscountBlogger).

Johann Hari, a writer for the Independent in London, was close to many Iraqi exiles – refugees from the Baath dictatorship – and was worried when they went back home at the end of the war this spring. But many have just returned for a brief visit to London and have been reporting what they found. His worst fears dissipated when he first saw them in his apartment, “beaming and speaking at a hundred words a minute.” They’re the younger generation and had gone back specifically to engage students and the younger generations:

First, they wanted to establish debating societies and newsletters in the Baghdad universities. “These are going to be the seeds of democracy,” Yasser explains. “Once you learn to argue against people instead of killing them as Saddam did, you’re on your way. We explained to the university students that they could have different newspapers – and even have different opinions in the same newspapers – and it seemed totally surreal to them. They just couldn’t understand it. But when they realised that it really was possible and nobody was going to punish them, they were so excited that they were just obsessed. They were in the middle of their exams and supposed to be studying, but they insisted on writing and photocopying a newsletter that they distributed everywhere. They wrote articles on amazing things they could find out about on the internet – philosophy and art and the difference between proportional representation and first-past-the-post! It was the best thing in my life, seeing that,” Yasser says.

Thrilling, no? Like the fact that Iraq-Today.com explains why it’s written in English: they now have almost 200 competing outlets in Baghdad and beyond. So where’s the catch? The electricity problems, yes. Security, yes. But this most of all:

There is a terrible fear among many Iraqis that they will not be able to match the Kurds’ achievement if they are abandoned by the Americans once again. “The memories of 1991 are so vivid,” says Sama. “People still fear that somehow the Americans will abandon us and Saddam will claw his way back from the grave. They say, `It happened in 1991, it could happen again.’ That’s one crucial reason why people are reluctant to cooperate with the coalition.” She adds: “I find it absolutely incredible that the anti-war people are now calling for the coalition to leave straight away. Nobody in Iraq wants that. The opinion polls show it’s just 13 per cent. Don’t they care about the Iraqi people and what they want at all? This isn’t a game. This isn’t about poking a stick at George Bush. This is our lives.”

Yes. But many on the Western left couldn’t give a damn about the lives of Iraqis. If they had, they would have supported the war, wouldn’t they?

“At the time of the robbery, Ms. Boudin had been a fugitive for several years, since her known involvement in a 1970 terrorist bomb-making operation in New York City. She occupied herself in jail by getting a master’s degree in adult education, assisting other inmates to get degrees, and ministering to inmates with AIDS (a fashionable venereal disease).” – John Derbyshire, National Review. He subsequently denigrates Boudin because she is working to help women affected with HIV, because she isn’t helping people with a “less chic disease.” He describes this ministry as “cushy.” He should visit an AIDS ward. This “fashionable venereal disease” is killing millions across the planet – young, old, men, women, children. In prisons, it’s often a result of rape, and a growing crisis that needs to be addressed out of simple compassion. It can be transmitted by non-sexual means. To trivialize the suffering of people with such a disease by calling it “fashionable” is to spit in the face of the sick – yes, the sick. There are plenty of reasons to dislike what Kathy Boudin has done in the past. But that she is now helping some of the most marginalized and needy people in our society is surely a good thing, and something no sane or right-minded person would seek to belittle. Some of the editors at that magazine call themselves Christians. Yet they gladly publish a smug, sickening bigot like this. This isn’t funny. It isn’t even pertinent to any broader point. It’s despicable.

Tom Friedman comes to the only conclusion possible from recent events. France is not an ally of the United States. It’s an enemy. Their resentment is helping to undermine the cause of stability and progress in Iraq, and their machinations are doing immeasurable damage to the future of European-American relations. Money quote:

If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we’re sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.
But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government – after being so content with Saddam’s one-man rule – is so patently cynical.

Worse than cynical. Malevolent. I’ve been reading Peter Stothard’s lively book about the most critical month in Tony Blair’s premiership, Thirty Days. What really struck me about the internal debates in the British cabinet last March was the simple assumption of French malice and cynicism at every juncture. And this from a bunch of committed Europhiles. And it’s getting worse.

Check out this devastating analysis of the BBC’s fabrications about the Blair government. It’s all the more damning for appearing in the ultra-left newspaper, the Independent. Blair won’t be undamaged by this whole affair. But the credibility of the BBC is in tatters. Yay. Privatize it.