Month: September 2004

I found plenty to worry about in this Newsweek piece from Iraq, not least quotes from senior U.S. diplomats in the country, saying “We thought that there would be a reprieve after sovereignty, but all hell is breaking loose.” But this was new to me:

The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August – the worst monthly average since Bush’s flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and August numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider area of Iraq than ever before. And the number of gunshot casualties apparently took a huge jump in August. Until then, explosive devices and shrapnel were the primary cause of combat injuries, typical of a “phase two” insurgency, where sudden ambushes are the rule. (Phase one is the recruitment phase, with most actions confined to sabotage. That’s how things started in Iraq.) Bullet wounds would mean the insurgents are standing and fighting-a step up to phase three.

Look, I’d love to believe the good news – and some of it, thanks to our amazing soldiers, is good. But the broader reality is that we are losing this critical war right now. David Brooks has a sensible piece today defending the administration’s sensitive/gradualist approach to the insurgency. My worry is a deeper one: what if neither the hard-ass clean-Falluja strategy nor the softly-softly approach can work? What if one only goads further recruits for the insurgency and the other does the same in different fashion? Besides, the odds on a credible national election in January cannot be good right now. And if we pragmatically allow some parts of Iraq to gain democracy before others, won’t we be in danger of splitting the country apart? My fear is that we had a clear but narrow window of opportunity to bring about a real sovereign transition for twelve months or so after the fall of Baghdad. We missed it. All our current options are wrenching and bad ones. Doesn’t that count as an important part of Bush’s legacy?

FRANCE VS THE EU: A key French political figure comes out against the new EU Constitution. It’s doomed anyway, I’d say. Yay!

RATHER EMBARRASSING: It’s getting worse for CBS. Their forensics expert didn’t authenticate the Killian memos after all. The question now is not whether Dan Rather should go (of course he should). It’s how embarrassing it’s going to get while he clings on.

“I got a good laugh from your post on the “factual superiority of the blogosphere” because I did learn a lot of facts from blogs about the “CBS memos”.
From the right-wing blogs, I learned that the memo font matches MS Times-Roman, and nothing else. From the left-wings blogs, I learned that the memo font matches IBM Press-Roman, and nothing else.
From the right-wing blogs, I learned that small horizontal variation in spacing is proof of “kerning” and therefore computer generation. From the left-wing blogs, I learned that small vertical variation in alignment is proof of mechanical action and therefore typewriter creation.
I learned that the right-wing facts are certainly true, as noted by Washington Post experts, and the left-wing facts are certainly true, as established by the Boston Globe.
From the right-wing blogs, I learned that a trusted expert is one who writes to Glenn Reynolds, offering to withhold any opinion on any topic if only the good Professor will end the stream of right-wing e-mail abuse. This guy’s pleading uncertainty proves to Mickey Kaus and a waiting world that the Globe is full of crap.
From the left-wing blogs, I learned that a trusted expert is a long-time Kevin Drum poster who suddenly reveals (without evidence) that he was an IBM typewriter salesman and therefore has knowledge that apparently belongs to no other living human. This guy’s self-proclaimed certainty proves to Dailykos and a waiting world that the Washington Post is full of crap.
From all blogs, I learned that the low resolution of the documents nullifies all supposed “facts” that contradict any locally favored facts.
From all my reading, I learned the comforting fact that we can all choose our facts as we please and yet still go to bed at night sure that all of our facts have survived the rigorous scrutiny that only the blogosphere can provide.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Andrew, Look, like you, I am aghast at the GOP and its partisan plays to the social conservatives. I’m a New York Republican, whose main focus is foreign policy. Like you, I’m a hawk. Like you, I’m a fiscal conservative (so neither party gives me a home on this issue). On social policy, I’m closer to a San Francisco Democrat, and I RESPECT you for not allowing your self-respect to continue to be co-opted by the Republicans playing footsie with the haters. Yet, from my perspective, if you don’t get the foreign policy right, the economic and social issues won’t matter. So I reluctantly, with teeth gnashing, support the GOP — this round, while in this awful war, the fact that there are many areas to legimately criticize on the conduct of this war, notwithstanding.
But Andrew, re: “Klein on Kerry,” you can’t have it both ways. You can’t propose that Kerry challenge Bush to be more forceful in taking on the Sunni triangle, AND recognize that this would sound completely alien coming from Kerry. Everything Kerry has ever said and equivocated upon in foreign policy eliminates any plausibility or credibility in him challenging the President to be more forceful. Speaking from a reluctant partisan’s perpective, I’d like to hear Kerry say just that. The laugh-track from the public at large would raise Bush’s ratings a couple of points.
Get a grip, Andrew! I understand the lonely and principled place you find yourself in, but don’t abandon your usually sensible analysis.” Fair enough. I have been longing to hear something strong and credible from Kerry on the war, but you cannot get past his own record, his obvious instincts, his meandering mind. All of which, of course, makes me more despondent about this election. The incompetent versus the irresolute. God help us. More feedback on the Letters Page.

The best pop-musicians on the planet just put music to Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” in Trafalgar Square. My favorite British fan comment: “I for one felt quite transported, despite the chill breeze and the drizzle.” DVD, please. Actually.

“I caught ‘Shattered Glass’ on cable this weekend. It occurred to me that there is no way that any of Glass’s bogus stories could have survived the scrutiny of the blogosphere. All the inconsistencies and non-existent sources would have been discovered in hours.
It’s not an accident that a new online journal broke the story, but it took them a while to nail down the facts, and a dozen counterfiet stories made it through before Glass was discovered. How long would it take now for the blogosphere to discover that there is no “Jukt Micronics Corporation” or that the Omni hotel does not have minibars in its rooms? 30 minutes? An hour, tops?
In the film, Glass speaks of a ‘hole’ in the fact checking system relied upon by traditional media: much of the ‘fact checking’ consists of nothing more than ensuring that the final story is consistent with the reporter’s notes. Well, it seems to me than in the 6 years since Glass was fired from TNR, this hole has been filled by bloggers like you.” Well, I deserve no credit for this (my first hunch was that the Killian memos were probably real), but the point is well taken.

Joe Klein has a good and tough column on Kerry this week. I too found Kerry’s recent attempt to make the fiscal case against the Iraq war almost comically awful. But then I find most things about the Kerry candidacy almost comically awful. But Joe makes a really good point about how Kerry should tackle Bush’s incompetence in war-management:

Bush has chosen not to fight in the Sunni triangle, and the war cannot be won until he does. “You can’t allow the enemy to have sanctuaries and expect to win,” John McCain told me. “You have to go in and dig them out.” Kerry could have challenged Bush: “Fight the war, Mr. President, or bring the troops home.” It would have been blunt, strong, simple-indeed, simplistic, just as Bush often is-but it might also have put the President on the defensive for a change. Kerry wouldn’t even have to say what he would do: he could legitimately argue that would depend on the situation on the ground in January. It would also, I suspect, reflect Kerry’s true feelings: that Bush has waged an incompetent war in Iraq, which he is in serious danger of losing.

The only trouble here is that this would sound far more convincing from someone (like yours truly) who has always been an enthusiast for a well-managed war to democratize the Middle East and rout terrorists in their lairs. Kerry has a credibility gap on this, to say the least. But it’s still the right message: Mr president, you have the courage to launch vital wars; you just don’t have the competence to win them. Get out of the way before we lose this battle – and make things even worse than before 9/11. (Hat tip: Noam).

Glenn Reynolds makes a very astute point about the factual superiority of the blogosphere. I’m beginning to believe that Rathergate is a tipping point.

How the White House bungled the Fallujah siege – against the advice of the military on the ground. Money quote from Lt. Gen. James T. Conway:

“When you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, you really need to understand what the consequences of that are going to be and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that. Once you commit, you got to stay committed.”

Now just imagine if a president Gore had done such a thing. Do you think Republicans would have stayed mum?

“‘The Entertainers For Bush coalition is not just for entertainers or the famous, but it is for anyone involved in the entertainment community, full- or part-time, or those that volunteer,’ says [founder] Wayne Alan, a world-champion illusionist.” – Washington Post today.

A useful debunking of some myths and a helpful exploration of other dangers. Bottom line: as Jon Rauch has put it, Iraq is now a mess, not a disaster. Or rather, it is a mess with a potential to become a disaster. How we turn things around should be the central issue in this campaign. Too bad it isn’t.

If you haven’t read Jim Fallows’ harrowing piece about the past year in Iraq, you should. But you should also take a look at Gregg Easterbrook’s response. Gregg manages to criticize the Bush administration’s miscalculations without demonizing them:

The White House, Rumsfeld, and the National Security Council thought: Afghanistan is unconquerable, it overcame the British and the Soviets, we want to have limited involvement in Afghanistan and set expectations low. Iraq, on the other hand, will be a cakewalk like in 1991, and they’ll cheer us in the streets as we arrive. The administration believed that all-out commitment to Afghanistan would lead to embarrassing mess, while invading Iraq would be a big success, bringing praise and perhaps stabilizing the Middle East – maybe even changing the psychology of the terror war if Al-Jazeera showed throngs of Muslims cheering U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad. What happened turned out to be the reverse of the plan on both counts; Afghanistan went surprisingly well (in part because the Afghans wanted us, whereas they despised the Soviets) and Iraq couldn’t have gone much worse. But it’s hardly irrational to avoid the place where you think you will fare poorly and act in the place where you expect victory, which is essentially what Bush decided.

Of course, what we do now is another matter. Gregg thinks we’re killing hundreds of mujahideen on Iraq, which can only be a good thing. Yes it is – as long as the conflict doesn’t create many replacements. And the poor people of Iraq surely deserve more than being in the middle of an open-ended exercise in urban warfare in which their country is slowly destroyed. My early hope was that, having stabilized the country, U.S. forces could indeed have attracted professional terrorists to Iraq and killed them. But the Bush administration never sent enough troops to pacify the country, and so provoked the terrorism without being able to suppress it effectively. That’s the worst of all possible worlds. Look, we have to tough it out. But how much confidence can anyone still have in the president who engineered this in the first place, and who still refuses to recognize that anything is fundamentally awry?