Month: January 2005

How do we tell if the Iraqi elections are a success? That they happen at all? Surely we should have a higher standard than that. Here are my criteria: over 50 percent turnout among the Shia and Kurds, and over 30 percent turnout for the Sunnis. No massive disruption of voting places; no theft of ballots. Fewer than 500 murdered. Any other suggestions for relevant criteria? Am I asking too much? I’m just thinking out loud. But it makes sense to have some guidelines before Sunday so we don’t just fit what happens to our pre-existing hopes or rationalizations.

A moving visual tribute. Let’s pray that this Sunday, they get the democratic breakthrough they deserve.

Van Gogh’s film gets pulled from the International Film Festival in Rotterdam because of terror threats. More details here.

The accusation this time is that I haven’t been steady in my judgment of what’s going on in Iraq. Well, let me plead guilty. My judgment of a fast-moving, volatile and opaque situation that is largely off-limits to many journalists has indeed varied with events. My principles remain the same: I supported the overthrow of Saddam and hope we can achieve a more democratic polity in his wake. I still do. I sincerely hope the elections succeed. I have a feeling they will be more successful than many realize. Most elections are. I have said this on multiple occasions and written it on my blog. But I don’t know for sure. I’m in DC – almost as isolated a place as Venice, California. And when people I respect, like Burns and Kaplan, emphasize the extreme insecurity in Iraq from the place itself, I’m chastened and worry. Although I hope democracy succeeds, the fact that Iraqis have to face being gunned down in large numbers to vote does not strike me as a great achievement for an occupying power. A blog reflects the changing reality of the times and the variable responses of one human being to that reality. I take my responsibility as someone who supported this war seriously, which is why I have been keen not to ignore warning signs. What would Mickey have me do? I guess I could take the Reynolds line, rarely acknowledge setbacks or failures, link only to good news, stick my fingers in my ears when things go wrong, and mock those who worry. Or I could take the Hersh line that everything has been botched from the very beginning and that Saddam should have been left in power. But what if my best judgment is that the truth may be somewhere in between? Am I supposed not to reflect that in my blog? Besides, I’m not a military commander. I’m a blogger and writer. Does Mickey think the job of a writer is to take a line and stick to it in order to rally morale? If he does, then he can always read Powerline or the Belmont Club. Nothing unpredictable there. Whatever Bush does, they’ll defend it.

Besides, for Mickey to talk about unsteady judgment strikes me as a little rich. Hands up who can now recall whether Mickey was for the war or against it? Was he for Kerry or did he loathe him? Is he for gay marriage or against it? This is a man who cannot write a sentence without fifteen parentheses for qualifications, internal rebuttals, self-questioning, meta-meta-spin, obscure references to people he might once have dissed or who might have dissed him, and even an imaginary editor to subvert his own points even as he makes them. This idiosyncrasy is part of Mickey’s charm and why I have always loved reading him. He’s like Larry David parsing the Washington Monthly. But he takes after me for inconstancy? That’s like being accused by Woody Allen of being neurotic.

You can’t smoke on a ski mountain any more?

“The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that fear provides a power structure for political leaders. Hitler portrayed the Jews as the enemy and used it to instil fear and gain power. George Bush evokes the fear of terrorism and becomes a more powerful leader. The important thing moving forward is to look at history and understand. Only by seeing how such things develop can we be sure such atrocities will not happen again.” British leftist aristocrat, Tony Benn.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Just try to stay sane, Andrew. I long ago realized how the far left had turned language on its head in an Orwellian manner (for example, Noam Chomsky claiming to be an “anarchist”, “human rights activist”, and “democracy advocate”). Well, now the far right has done it. Now, the US needs to use torture to advance the cause of “freedom”, and anyone who thinks that torture is, you know, anathema to everything that America stands for is “anti-American”. Great. I’m going to go re-read “Politics and the English Language” now, before my head explodes.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

“In Iraq, the very centerpiece of the U.S. campaign to export democracy, ‘democratic movements and institutions’ are dying, the result of illiberalism, U.S. neglect, and, above all, sheer physical insecurity. As it grinds into its third year, the war for a liberal Iraq is destroying the dream of a liberal Iraq.” That’s Lawrence Kaplan‘s grim verdict from Baghdad. No doubt he will now be derided as a squishy left-liberal defeatist – but, in fact, Lawrence was one of the most stalwart supporters of the war against Saddam, co-authored a passionate pro-war book with Bill Kristol, and is a card-carrying neoconservative. (He’s also a friend). But he’s not blind; and he’s not dishonest. The failure is in part a failure to get the U.S. bureaucracy to support liberal institutions and groups; but it is also simply a failure of order and security. Democracy was always going to be hard in Iraq. But democracy amod chaos and violence is close to impossible. And we never sent enough troops or conducted a smart enough post-victory occupation plan to maintain order and defeat a fledgling insurgency while we still could. So we are now left to ask ordinary Iraqis to risk their lives in order to leave their homes and vote. Here’s the most heart-breaking passage – an interview with the liberal deputy defense minister, Mashal Sarraf, who cannot even leave his own house, because of the chaos:

“We have to admit the terrorists have won,” he says. “People cannot engage in civil society; the war has stopped progress; liberalism is over for now.” Asked what, if anything, can be done to revive the liberal project, Sarraf replies, “We need an emergency government that does nothing but security. When there is stability, then liberalism will begin to emerge, but only when there is stability.”

I know Paul Wolfowitz has read Hobbes. Did he forget it? CPA adviser Larry Diamond hasn’t: “You can’t have a democratic state unless you have a state, and the fundamental, irreducible condition of a state is that it has a monopoly on the means of violence.” As John Burns has written – again no sympathizer for Saddam or cynic – that simply isn’t the case in Iraq. Our predicament is that you cannot have democracy without order and you cannot have a new order without democracy. Do I want the elections to succeed? Of course I do. Only those blinded by partisanship or cynicism wouldn’t. Maybe a democratic miracle can occur. But at this point it would be exactly that: a miracle. So pray, will you?

ANOTHER ONE? Salon finds another conservative columnist financially enmeshed with the Bush administration. More Gallagher-level misdemeanor than Williams-level felony. Michelle Malkin comments.

HERSH UNPLUGGED: A stream of consciousness from the anti-war reporter. Here’s Max Boot’s take-down.

Here’s his response to a softball question yesterday:

Q: Mr. President, I’d like to ask you about the Gonzales nomination, and specifically, about an issue that came up during it, your views on torture. You’ve said repeatedly that you do not sanction it, you would never approve it. But there are some written responses that Judge Gonzales gave to his Senate testimony that have troubled some people, and specifically, his allusion to the fact that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of some prisoners is not specifically forbidden so long as it’s conducted by the CIA and conducted overseas. Is that a loophole that you approve?

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, Al Gonzales reflects our policy, and that is we don’t sanction torture. He will be a great Attorney General, and I call upon the Senate to confirm him.

Notice how Bush won’t address the issue in front of him. He won’t disavow the loophole. He won’t address the fact that his administration has carved out a remaining exception for the CIA, and stopped the Congress from ending it. Notice that his definition of “torture” is left vague – and subject to the Bybee non-restrictions. If you want clear evidence that this president condones the cruel, inhumane and degraging treatment of detainees, what he doesn’t say is as instructive as what he does. (Hat tip: Marty Lederman). My Q and A with NYT readers on my book review-essay can be read here.

BACK-STORY ON SPELLINGS: She was once out of favor with the religious right for seeming to believe that single moms could be ok at parenting. You know: like, er, Margaret Spellings. So what do you do if you’re in the Bush administration and want to curry favor with the base? Duh.

Here’s an email rebutting the TCS piece I linked to earlier today. Some great points, I think:

Arnold Kling’s “Oil Econ 101” article you linked to in Tech Central Station mocking the neocon goal of oil-independence begs for a response, because he gets exactly wrong the means and ends of the rationale for cutting US oil demand.

(Full Disclosure — I am a pro-McCain Eagle, supported the Iraq War, and I have covered oil and gas industry and commodity markets for six years for industry trade press, so have some familiarity with this).

Kling mocks efforts to cut our oil demand from the Saudis, noting “If we reduce oil consumption by 10 percent, then we will not cut 100 percent of our imports from Saudi Arabia. We cannot arrange to consume only American oil and no Saudi oil … If we reduce demand by 10 percent, we probably will reduce our demand for Saudi oil by 10 percent.” He then goes on to say this “indirect approach of reducing oil demand is meaningless. Only a worldwide boycott of Saudi oil would effectively cut off their oil revenues.” While Kling is correct that an intense conservation program would only marginally cut our reliance on the Saudis (they are the equivalent of the global Federal Reserve in crude production capacity, and nothing will change this unfortunate geological reality), what ultimately matters is the price they receive. It comes down to a question of oil revenues (price * volume) that matters most to their state budgets, and their capacity to buy off restless elements in their society.

The volume of oil that OPEC and the Saudis produce only changes marginally year to year, but the price can very tremendously. Crude prices — and all commodity prices — are set at the margin. The main reason crude is near $50/bbl now is that Chinese oil demand grew 15% last year (plus strong growth from India) and no one, not the Intl. Energy Association, not the Energy Information Administration and not even OPEC, saw it coming. Chinese demand growth is expected to be 8% in 2005, and that should be a very supportive factor going forward for oil prices. Yet the size of the Chinese market is still only about 1/5th to 1/6th our own. (Dealing with rapid Chinese demand growth in the future is another prickly matter…). The US consumes roughly 25 million b/d out of a global crude market of about 76 million b/d. If the US were to cut its oil use by 10% it would cause DRAMATIC downward pressure on the price of oil going forward, starving the budgets of the Middle East oil oligarchies. This is exactly what happened in 1997-1998, when global crude prices crashed to $10-$12/bbl becuase the Asian currency crisis sank Pacific crude demand, while a string of mild winters cut US heating oil needs. The amount of crude that Opec and the Saudis produced at the time declined somewhat, but only marginally, as Kling would have predicted. But their revenues plummeted due to weak crude prices well below forecasts.

I can tell you from our reporting at the time that the oilicrats in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypyt and Iran were sweating it big time due to mounting budget deficits and a failure to meet state budget commitments. It was a very dire time for the oiligarchs and undermined their domestic hold on power. Thankfully for them US gasoline demand remained strong due to our affair with SUVs, and eventually pulled the oiligarchs through to their current revenue bonanza. What Klingle doesn’t understand is that it is not about just states “sponsoring terrorism”, but forcing these sclerotic Middle East economies to face the same forces of dynamism that the rest of the world deals with it, resulting in more liberal societies. Not all countries in the Middle East have lots of oil. In fact countries like Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE have very little of it, and not coincidentally they represent the most liberal societies in the region. There is a strong argument that the societal unrest building in Iran is due in large part to their exploding population outgrowing the Mullah’s oil revenue, crippling their ability to buy off interests within society. We could help push them over the edge with a concerted effort to cut our oil demand. Young boys in Saudi Arabia might spurn the Jihad if they had something to look forward other than working for Saudi Petroleum or becoming freeloaders living off oil-driven state subsidies. That will never happen as long as the House of Saud remains flush with crude revenues.

So let’s conserve, shall we? And let’s increase taxes on gas while we’re at it. Far more effective than another botched war.

Heather Mac Donald is now arguing that some of the victims of torture documented in the official government and Red Cross reports are liars. Meanwhile, Little Green Footballs, the enthusiastically pro-torture site, has a thread … well, given the sexually graphic insults hurled my way, let’s just say that Margaret Spellings wouldn’t want to read it. Money quotes from LGF posters:

“Burning cigarettes in their ears.” Don’t they know cigarettes cause cancer? … I’m getting sick hearing about the so-called torture at Abu Ghraib. Do you realize how much money some guys in Hollywood would pay to be led around by a chick in fatigues while wearing a collar? … Plain and simple: Andrew Sullivan is an “enemy of the state.” He has no concern for this nation, and like so many of the “liberal elite,” would simply “give” our country away to those who would destroy it, if he had his choice. Three cheers for Heather Mac Donald for writing an article which demonstrates the true depth of Sullivan’s anal-cranial inversion … Many of Sullivan’s factual claims are tenuous at best. He asserts, for example, that ‘we now know that in Guantanamo, burning cigarettes were placed in the ears of detainees.’ Uh … which END of the burning cigarettes were placed in the ears of the detainees? Filter Tip? Menthol? Low Nicotine? I can think of another place in a detainee I’d insert a burning cigarette … wait, scratch that … make it a Macanudo … Is it still beyond the pale to suggest that Sully is in the throes of AIDS-related dementia? I mean, the evidence does keep piling up. Acknowledging that a person’s apparent behavior may be the result of disease, when the person is known to have that disease, and when the disease (or its treatment) is known to produce a specific response, is not necessarily a smear.

Not necessarily a smear.