HITCH IS FOR KERRY

So the other tattered pro-war British shoe drops:

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one’s subjective vote, one’s objective vote, and one’s ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.
The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan’s anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry’s pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can’t compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.

And so we agree again. Let’s see the National Review crowd spin that as a vote on the FMA.

MY ENDORSEMENT: It’s now posted opposite. Reihan will be assembling the best responses for the Letters Page. Forgive me for not responding to all the emails. It’s physically impossible. But I read as many as I could. Thanks for your praise and criticism.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It is quite right to worry whether the Americans are sincere about bringing democracy to Iraq – given their record in the region, it would be insane not to be. But I don’t agree at all that if the Iraqis get the chance of democracy they won’t take it. If you look at all the opinion polls, they are absolutely unequivocal about his. They put tribe very low on their list of reason why they will vote for a candidate. The Ayatollah Sistani has emerged as a committed democrat – showing that democrats always emerge in the strangest of places. If Arabs are irredeemably tribal, then dictatorship is the only possible route for the region. I don’t believe that, and far more importantly, the evidence doesn’t show it. We shouldn’t be naxefve about US power, but we also shouldn’t be patronising about the capacities of Arabs.
And please remember: if the invasion hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be talking about Iraqi democracy, ever. We would be talking about Saddam and Uday and Qusay forever. I say better a chance at democracy and trade unions and decency – even if you think it’s slim – than an eternity of Ba’athism.” – Johann Hari, in an interesting debate with Robert Fisk, on his own website.

JOHN PEEL: Most Americans will have no idea who this irrepressibly individualist DJ was. But that’s what the British obits are for. Herewith the wonderful life and deep integrity of a man who knew what he liked in music and played it. I also admired his description of a professional relationship he had with a radio producer: it was that of “the organ-grinder and the monkey. With each one believing the other to be the monkey.”