Month: September 2004

Here’s a point worth remembering:

The anti-war website Iraqbodycount.net estimates that between 11,487 and 13,458 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the war. Added to that are 1049 coalition deaths listed. That is a staggering 14,507 deaths since March 19 last year – a horrendous average of 28.5 people, real human beings, a day for the 509 days.
How could this ever be justified? Wouldn’t Iraq have been better off without this?
It is estimated that Saddam killed between 500,000 and 1 million of his own people in the 13 years since the Gulf War, not including the effects of the sanctions. The lower number averages out to be 105 a day.
Assuming Saddam had stayed in power, as the anti-war movement would have had, and assuming his regime did not fundamentally change, Saddam could have killed between 53,445 and 106,890 innocent people in the same 509 days.
In other words, the war probably cost between 38,938 and 92,383 fewer lives than the so-called peace would have cost.

Couldn’t agree more. It’s just that using the standard of Saddam Hussein is not exactly morally reassuring about our current conduct. (Hat tip: Morley.) For a harrowing tale of apparent U.S. abuse of prisoners, here’s a first hand account from the Guardian (and yes, that means keep your skepticism on high).

LEFT VERSUS LEFT: Great post by Kevin Drum on that awful old bore, Robert Scheer. Money quote:

[Scheer’s] a smart guy and a talented writer, but he’s too self-indulgent to modulate his tone based on his audience. He’s got valuable op-ed real estate at his disposal, and the purpose of valuable op-ed real estate is to persuade doubters, not drive them into the hands of your enemies by confirming their worst fears about your own side.
Until he figures that out, he needs to be confined to writing flyers for anti-globo rallies and polemics for CounterPunch. In the meantime, I don’t feel like losing any elections because of him.

Can’t Kinsley get rid of him?

Jack Shafer asks why it took CBS News so long to correct the record. he makes a bunch of good points – but it doesn’t seem to occur to him that liberal bias played even a teensy part in the Rather/Mapes blinders. There are cocoons other than Rather’s, it seems. And Jack is in one. Does he think that Slate, for example, is not a liberal website? That would be a good place to start.

SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS: That’s what Dan Rather gets a year. I think the need to feel pity for him just evaporated. Please, leave.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “Kate O’Beirne–and Jim–hold the greatest parties. Kate did not forget those wonderful little pastries for dessert that I have tasted only in her house, the chocolate one to die for, the vanilla one merely exquisite. And it was really fun to meet so many readers and fans of NRO, and to listen to exciting observations and analyses from them, and get some questions and probings… I was, however, startled to meet so many fellow writers on NRO, whose names have become famous to me, but whom I’ve never met. Wow! are you fellow writers young! …I have seldom in my life felt so grandfatherly… And I do not think that marvelous Communist rendition that John Derbyshire managed with enormous aplomb and feeling actually was sung in Mandarin Chinese, as he said. It sounded to me like a dialect far, far to the South of that. But the Communist feeling was authentic. Especially if one imagines Communists as if they were actually in the cast of Les Miserables (Al Gore’s favorite show). John was heroic, and he alone would have made the evening…But everything about the evening was sweetened by the hostess and her welcoming, laid-back, happy ways. She does a party right. So that the conversation flew fast and furious. The drinks flowed, and the smoke soared skyward.” – Michael Novak. Novak wrote essentially the same piece about the situation in Iraq here.

Jonah cites Dunkirk as evidence that even Churchill was fallible as a war leader. But, of course, Dunkirk was Chamberlain’s legacy and occurred just after the Brits checked out their war-leader (Chamberlain), realized he was incompetent, and picked another one. A better example would be Gallipoli – a spectacular military catastrophe that Churchill engineered – and took decades to recover from. Of course, the comparison between Bush and Churchill is ludicrous in any case, as most Bush supporters would agree. My own angle: Churchill never failed to remind the Brits that they were up against it, and he was always candid about failure – because he knew that falsely-optimistic spin only weakened morale in the long term. He also made sure to include opposition leaders in his cabinet, made amends with his union foes, and did everything to keep the country united as it faced a war for survival. Bush has managed to divide this country in wartime (with help, of course, from the Michael-Moore-Terry-McAuliffe left).

Some are asking us not to give up on their faltering steps toward democracy. We shouldn’t.

The text is here.

My take on the pajama people, in Time.

“Have to agree that both parties would probably benefit from losing this one. Maybe we could install some sort of regent or administrator to run things for 4 years and they try again in 2008? Ok, probably not a good idea.
Kerry gets elected – Iraq slides from chaos to disaster to catastrophe. There’s very little Kerry can do but find some way to declare victory and get out. What’s left of Iraq becomes a vassal/client state of Iran, except perhaps for Kurdistan. The infinitely superior republican spin machine manages to stick Kerry with this stinkburger. After a mediocre 4 years, John McCain wins in 2008. The man who should have won in 2000.
Bush gets elected – Iraq slides from chaos to disaster to catastrophe. There’s very little Bush can do but find some way to declare victory and get out. What’s left of Iraq becomes a vassal/client state of Iran, except perhaps for Kurdistan. They try to stick, I dunno, Tom Daschle with this one but that’s too much of a stretch. The war on terror fizzles out as foreign adventures look much less attractive. Bush sinks well below 50% approval rating as his administration slides into the typical second term lame duck scandal fest. Scandals both venal and serious (Plame, who knows what else) blow up. Republican fatigue grows very noticable. President Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008 and serves two terms. The Senate also goes democratic.” More feedback on the Letters Page, edited by Reihan Salam.

THE RIGHT WAKES UP: Rick Brookhiser, sane as ever, notices the threat to Bush.

Slowly but surely, the Bush administration is trying to undo the protections that gay government employees gained under Clinton. The latest example is the Social Security Agency, according to this report:

Social Security Administration officials are trying to remove language protecting employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation from the agency’s labor contract, union leaders claim. During negotiations on renewing the contract, SSA officials proposed eliminating a clause that allows gay, lesbian and bisexual workers to file discrimination grievances, said Witold Skwierczynski, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220.

The Bushies preposterously claim they only want to “protect” marriage. But quietly they pass amendments and laws that would make even basic protections for gay couples legally vulnerable and renegotiate employment contracts so they can fire homosexuals at will. Maybe some gays will vote for Bush this time around. But they must know it’s a little like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.

Jonah Goldberg’s column today strikes me as excellent – honest, candid, and largely persuasive. It reminds me why he’s easily the best conservative writer of his generation – because he’s immune to the kind of ideological cocoon that can prevent others from seeing things clearly. And because of that, it’s striking that his ultimate choice for Bush in this war is premised almost entirely on Kerry:

So sure, Bush hasn’t done everything right – never mind perfectly – in Iraq. Churchill didn’t conduct World War II perfectly every time either. Dunkirk wasn’t the sort of thing that happens when the war goes swimmingly. But Bush gets all of this. John Kerry doesn’t, in my opinion. Or, to be more accurate, John Kerry “gets” everything and therefore nothing. If the choice were between Bush and a better commander-in-chief, I might not vote for Bush. But that’s not the choice, now is it?

Hard to dissent. There are two Kerrys in my mind (and about a few hundred other ones in Kerry’s). One is Carter-Redux: former military peacenik, paralyzed by indecision, unable to win a peace, let alone a war. The other is the Honorable Bore: the establishment guy who won’t be terrible and whose steady, consensus-ridden hand we might need after the recklessness of young Hal. I’m torn between the two. I really do worry that Bush is out of his depth in this conflict, and that his handling of Iraq these past twelve months essentially disqualifies him from re-election. But better the devil you know? If the war was the only issue – and the fiscal lunacy, social intolerance and institutional arrogance were not also in play, I might have to swallow hard and go for Bush. But a vote for wimping out in Fallujah, bigger government and the social policy of James Dobson? Please. Bush’s crude, see-no-problems campaign has also done a lot to persuade me that he’s not up to the job. Lowry sums up why Kerry’s new strategy is not crazy. I do the same in TNR. I’m glad we’re talking.

Today’s must-read is a nuanced and fascinating account of what’s going on in Fallujah, the dangerous power vacuum caused as we wait for Iraqi soldiers to be trained, the potential for Zarqawi to over-play his hand, and the inevitability of an intense future conflict. The piece made me both more hopeful and more concerned at the same time. Which may be the only rational response to the current mess in Iraq.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Everybody has a game face on. Too bad this is not a game.” – George Will, in a quietly chilling column today on Iraq.