Month: July 2004

This week strikes me as easily the most important week for the Kerry candidacy. The voters who will decide this election have already, I think, made up their minds that they could live without a second Bush term. This is not because they necessarily hate Bush (many don’t, including me); nor because they believe that his war and economic policies have been failures (again, I think the record is mixed); but because his conduct of the war in the last year has been wracked with error and hubris, and his economic policy relies upon tax cuts that we simply cannot afford with the kind of spending levels Bush has also enacted. I think it’s also clear that, in so far as some swing voters are libertarian in outlook, Bush has shown his authoritarian, anti-federalist colors. This administration is uninterested in restraining government power, in balancing the budget, in winning over opponents (as opposed to sliming them), and in allowing people to live their own lives free from government moralism. There is not even a sliver of daylight between the White House and the religious right in social policy. This isn’t what we were told before the last election; and it isn’t what many of us hoped for. But it remains the case that Bush’s determination to defeat Jihadist terror is beyond much doubt, even if his methods seem often strained by incompetence, recklessness and arrogance. So Kerry has a great opportunity to win over the undecideds over this week, and if he cannot take advantage of it, he will reveal himself unworthy of the office he seeks.

WHAT KERRY MUST SAY: The most important task of this convention is to persuade Americans that a future Democratic administration will fight this country’s enemies with a passion and energy and consistency at least comparable to Bush’s. If Kerry doesn’t make this a centerpiece of his speech, he deserves to lose. He needs a passage that goes something like this:

Let me now address those in the world who believe that the United States, under a Democratic president, will cower before terror or respond to any future attacks with passivity and weakness. Nothing could be further from the truth. As president, I will pursue this country’s real enemies every day I am in the Oval Office; I will seek them out and bring them to justice; I will ensure that our historic duty to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq is met in full, however long it takes, however hard the task. To the murderers of al Qaeda, let me say this. Do not even begin to interpret a Democratic victory as some sign that we will acquiesce to your murderous intent and nihilist politics. In the war against Jihadism, there is no Democrat or Republican. There is simply American. We will unite to defeat you and to secure our country.

Am I dreaming? I don’t know. If Kerry bores on about healthcare or taxes without focusing on terror, then he will richly deserve to lose. Unlike some, I’m open to persuasion. This war is far too important to be left to one party. The 9/11 Commission was an important reminder that we can indeed work together to find a way forward against the dire threat we still face. And it is indeed a failure that this president, far from uniting the country behind this war, has served to divide it more deeply. He may, however, be the best we have on offer. This week will go a long way toward resolving that question.

“9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests ‘over there’ should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America ‘over here.’ In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just ‘terrorism,’ some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism – especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.
As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world-against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the ‘head of the snake,’ and it must be converted or destroyed.
It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground – not even respect for life – on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.” – one of the most moving and powerful passages in the remarkably good 9/11 Commission Report. It bears a great deal of similarity to the argument I made three years ago, in “This Is A Religious War.”

KERRYPALOOZAH: Three new pieces on the Kerry campaign are now posted. Here’s my TNR fisking of Kerry’s speech introducing Edwards. Here’s my worry about Kerry’s gay politics, from the recent Advocate. Here’s my latest Sunday Times column on the conservative appeal of Kerry, given the radicalism and recklessness of the past three and a half years. Lastly, here’s my Time column on Bush’s exploitation of marriage to shore up his base. Enjoy. Or not, as the case may be.

A useful account of the current stand-off against the Iraqi insurgents – in the critical Sunni town of Ramadi.

“HITLER’S BLOG”: The biased Daschle-buddy, who edits the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, lets it rip again – against those pesky bloggers.

GOING AFTER SOFT DRUGS: Bush is apparently now ratcheting up the war on soft drugs, ordering “that resources be allocated to fighting so-called ‘soft’ drugs instead of concentrating on harder forms, such as heroin and cocaine.” The problem, according to the administration, is that marijuana is now more potent than in the past. i.e. more people are experiencing higher levels of pleasure. There’s no evidence they’re hurting anyone else – or even that they’re hurting themselves. But pleasure itself is an evil for some of these busy-bodies. Remind me why libertarians should support Bush again, will you?

The New Republic’s advice around this time in 1948. D’oh!

Do it the way it’s always been done: bribe him.

REPUBLICANS FOR NADER: They’re champing at the bit in Michigan.

Well, they used to live in a dictatorship fueled by propaganda. So they are perhaps better suited to see through Michael Moore’s vile techniques.

An astronishing yet unsurprising statistic unearthed by blogger David M. Of all Ivy League faculty donations to candidates, 92 percent went to Kerry. The highest rate of donations to Bush in any Ivy League University is 16 percent – at Princeton. Meanwhile, blogger Michael Petrelis has done some digging on mega-rich socialist, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation. She has donated around $145,000 over twenty years to various candidates and organizations.

ONLY IN AMERICA: Regular readers will know what I think of Robert Byrd – a bloviating, bigoted thief of other people’s money. But his family lineage nevertheless makes for fascinating reading. This is from his bio on his website:

He is married to the former Erma Ora James, his high school sweetheart and a coal miner’s daughter. They are the parents of two daughters, Mrs. Mohammad (Mona Byrd) Fatemi and Mrs. Jon (Marjorie Byrd) Moore. Senator and Mrs. Byrd have been blessed with six grandchildren — Erik, Darius, and Fredrik Fatemi; Michael (deceased), Mona, and Mary Anne Moore — and four great-granddaughters: Caroline Byrd Fatemi and Kathryn James Fatemi; Emma James Clarkson and Hannah Byrd Clarkson. In February 2004, Senator and Mrs. Byrd welcomed their first great-grandson, Michael Yoo Fatemi.

From a member of the KKK to Michael Yoo Fatemi in two generations. Not bad.

MORE DISHONEST SPIN: Once again, the anti-marriage forces have been spinning a little too heavily. Anti-gay senators Brownback and Cornyn have been claiming that the late Senator Moynihan would have opposed extending the responsibilities of civil marriage to gay couples. Not so fast, says his wife.

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Washington Blade has found a reference by the president to the word “gay.” He said the phrase “gay marriage” in Pennsylvania, referring to someone else’s question. He knows that gay people exist! Now if he could only apply to adjective to actual human beings. But it’s a start. And don’t give me the pablum abhout not treating people as members of a group. Today, at the Urban League, Bush asked: “Is it a good thing for the African-American community to be represented mainly by one political party? Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat Party truly served the African-American people?” That’s the difference between a group of people you respect and want to win over and a group of people you marginalize for political gain.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Your blog links to an inaccurate statement in a Fox report which claims that wives should be subservient to their husbands, when the word Judge Holmes used was subordinate. Subservient implies obsequiousness or servility while subordinate implies submitting to the authority of another (which can arguably be considered a sign of strength). You use the incorrect word in your blog.” The strength to be subordinate! And this comes from a religious tradition that began with a man who defied almost every social convention of his time and treated women – even single women – as his equals; who never married and broke up the families and marriages of his disciples; who told his own parents as a teenager that they had no final control over him; and whose best friends were a single woman and a single man who is described in the Gospels as resting his head on Jesus’ breast in an act of profound intimacy. How you get the subordination of women and the persecution of homosexuals from all that is beyond me.