Month: July 2004

The always-worth reading Greg Djerejian makes the case for limited engagement with the mullahs in Tehran. I remain a skeptic.

I hope this becomes the central foreign policy question of the campaign: What are the differences between Bush’s and Kerry’s approaches to Iran? One of our recent failings (and I readily include myself) has been, I think, to conceive of the “war on terror” in too abstract a way. We need to unpack the notion that one guy is “weak” and the other “strong” in the war or that one is more “unilateralist” the other less so – and ask hard practical questions of the candidates. Here are a few that spring immediately to mind: Do you consider Iran an enemy of the United States? How integral is the Tehran regime to the Jihadist terror network? How plausible is democratic government in Iraq with continued obstruction from Iran? How would you grapple with the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb? The truth is that, for all its rhetorical bluster, the Bush administration’s Iran policy has been all over the map. Michael Ledeen summed up the way the Bushies have responded to serious evidence of Iranian malice over the years:

You find half of bin Laden’s family and top assistants in Tehran? Not to worry, maybe the mullahs didn’t know. You discover that that 9/11 band crossed Iran and were assisted by the border guards and customs officials? Not to worry, that wasn’t necessarily the actual policy – this from the lips of the acting director of Central Intelligence on Fox News yesterday. Scores of Iranian intelligence agents are found in Iraq, some in the act of preparing bombs? Some bright bulb in the intelligence community puts out the line that Iran is actually helpful to us, and has actually restrained Hezbollah. We find Iranian involvement in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia? The evidence is quashed by the Saudis, with the complicity of State and large sectors of the intelligence community.

The usual suspects – Council on Foreign Relations, Scowcroft, et al – want detente. Others – like Ledeen – want a far more pointed and aggressive interventionism. I lean strongly toward Michael’s view, not only because I loathe the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, but because I cannot see how we can truly turn the tide on Jihadist terror without grappling with the mullahs at the ideological and military center of it all. Fitting this piece into the post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq puzzle is perhaps the most important foreign policy challenge of the next few years. Let’s see if Kerry or Bush even cite it in their convention speeches. Apart from a general sense (belied by the past three years) that Bush would be tougher, I really don’t know where they both specifically stand. Shouldn’t we find out soon?

MORE MURDER: Here’s something that I’d like to find out, especially after yesterday’s carnage in Baghdad: what is now the ratio of Muslims to infidels murdered by the Jihadists over the last year? It’s hard not to believe that the major victims of the Islamist terror wave are now Muslims and Arabs. Eventually, I have to believe that will help us turn the tide of popular Arab opinion against the mullah-murderers. It already has had something of that effect in Iraq.

Is he still having problems? A local lefty blog sees trouble in Ohio.

BLAIR ON CRIME: What do you do when you’re a center-left leader and need to regain popularity? You launch a crackdown on crime. It’s good politics, but the kind of micro-management of society that Blair’s politics represents rubs my libertarian nerves the wrong way. Strange, though, isn’t it, that the Blair-Clinton version of the left – one that shamelessly robs the right of their usual issues (welfare, crime, terrorism) – is so not very obvious in the Kerry-Edwards campaign. The thing I’m looking forward to most next week is a glimpse at how the Kerry campaign wants to pitch the center-left. Clinton/Blair or Dean/Gephardt? Or something, er, straddling all of it?

BLOGGING, JOURNALISM, TRANSPARENCY: Jeff Jarvis was hobnobbing with some major media macherdom in Aspen and, as always, he writes up a razor-sharp account.

WILSONFREUDE: Glenn is reveling in it. And who can blame him? Has anyone as repulsively pompous as Joe Wilson emerged from the D.C. undergrowth in recent years?

ONE FACT: Every now and again, you’re reading the paper, and a sentence obscures the rest of your day. Here was mine yesterday:

France’s prison population is more than 50 percent Muslim.

That’s a stunning statistic, if true. What does it say about France’s ability to integrate immigrants that it has failed so dramatically with Muslims? And what does it say about France’s ability to stand up to Jihadist terror, when they are already sitting on a demographic and social time bomb?

The ultimate David Hasselhoff video is just one click away.

COMING UP FOR AIR: This bronchial bug has been tearing through Provincetown. I’ve long had asthma so I’m not normally fazed by an inability to breathe right. But this one was like some kind of suffocation. It reminded me of the asthma attacks I used to have as a child. A good deal of the response you need is psychological. You have to calm yourself down, stop yourself hyper-ventilating, or the asthma feeds on itself and you can get in serious trouble. Back in my childhood, they had very little to give you – not even an inhaler that worked – so my dad had to keep rubbing my back, staying up half the night in case I started to turn blue. I used to sit up in bed (if I lay down, I couldn’t breathe at all), training myself not to panic, occasionally breathing in the steam from a bowl of boiled water. I used to time my breaths and try and extend them slowly over the course of an hour or so. Funny how these ancient habits kick back in when you need them. Anyway, the antibiotics and inhalers are now working. I should be blog-ready soon enough.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I read with interest your thoughts on writing a book on conservatism. I think it is long overdue.
The old model has in many ways broken down, perhaps because those goals that were achievable have been achieved, and those that were not are becoming apparent. Movements sometimes get lost at about this time and need a time out of office to rethink core principles.
We may need a new word for the new conservatism because it has few similarities to traditional conservatism. The Cold War was won. A stronger military coupled with a skepticism about it’s use (containment with overwhelming military superiority) has been replaced with an aggressive theory of preventive intervention and nation building. A 50 year reliance on building strong alliances around the world has been replaced by coalitions of the willing and weakened alliances. Taxes were lowered over the past couple of decades spurring faster economic growth, but continuing tax cuts seem to jeopardize the nation’s fiscal health. A long held commitment to a strong dollar strategy has been transformed into a weak dollar strategy, eerily reminiscent of old Labor policies in Britain. Welfare was reformed and some entitlements limited, but reform seems to have lost political momentum in the face of an aging population demanding more, not less, government. Some movement toward shifting some responsibilities back to the states has been replaced by a constitutional attempt to radically enlarge the role of the Federal government in personal and social issues at the expense of the states. What seems to remain from traditional conservatism is a commitment to traditional social norms, but this too has changed from verbal support to a much more aggressive attempt to use the power of the Federal government to enforce conservative, Christian conservative, norms legislatively.
We seem to have a new conservatism that by historical standards is not very conservative internationally, economically, or when it comes to the role of government in providing entitlements. On the other hand, we also seem to have a new conservatism committed to enlarging the role of the Federal government in personal and social areas at the expense of the states. Whatever this new conservatism is, it doesn’t much look like traditional conservatism. Let’s give it a new name. And let’s give it the benefit of some free time to rethink core principles.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Having some health issues. Back soon. Meanwhile, here’s my latest column on the “values” phase in the presidential campaign.

An interesting take on the younger generation of coservatives in the NYT. I do think we’re on the brink of a major debate about what conservatism now is, especially after the Bush first term. (I’m thinking of finally sitting down and writing a real book about what I think conservatism should be.) But I was also struck by how much of the debate is being fostered by websites and blogs. They’re the National Reviews of the new millennium. The future really is here, isn’t it?

Nope, there was no bounce from Edwards. Mickey gloats.

Ryan Lizza looks at the weird dynamics of the electorate this year. Undecided voters, when you look further, are very anti-Bush and almost certain to vote for Kerry, if they vote at all. But there’s naother kind of voter out there:

Why is it that in many polls, Bush’s job approval rating is higher than the percentage who say they will vote for him? Fabrizio calls this difference the “approval gap.” In his 19-state poll the percentage of people who approve of the job Bush is doing but say they will vote for Kerry is 8.6 percent.
Approval-gap voters seem to be the great anomaly of American politics. Kerry voters tend to intensely dislike Bush, and Bush voters seem to intensely dislike Kerry. Undecided voters often get tagged as wishy-washy, but secretly they seem to be just as polarized as everyone else about Bush and Kerry. Approval-gap voters, by contrast, are the true equivocators. They are both pro-Bush and pro-Kerry. They just happen to be a little more pro-Kerry. They have a net favorable opinion of Bush (48 percent favorable to 30 percent unfavorable), but an even higher net favorable opinion of Kerry (54 percent favorable to 15 percent unfavorable).

An interesting wrinkle. I have a feeling many Dish readers are “approval gap voters.”

Now there’s a figure to rouse the country from its torpor. But the social conservatives need to find someone to speak at the convention. Why not Santorum or DeLay? Why not James Dobson?

Michael Petrelis has done some digging and found which hacks have given to which candidates. Big surprise: “President George Bush didn’t receive a single donation from any outlet or reporter in my search.” The New Yorker is, in particular, up to its eyeballs in reporter contributions to lefties and Dems.