Month: March 2006

A reader writes on the Krugman attack and my defense:

"I’m speaking from my own standpoint here, and there are a whole lot of folks out there just like me–after 9/11 we were not partisan. I didn’t vote for George Bush in 2000, but I supported what began after 9/11. It felt GOOD to support him and feel the unity of the country. I loved it.

And then it all started to come apart. Not, as you accuse, because of partisanship–and you’re saying specifically it was Democrats (and Krugman, and "leftists" on college campuses–oh gawd I gotta yawn) who were the partisan troublemakers. But it came apart because the unity and support began to be abused and misued, and some of us did not allow our love of that unity and support of our leader during a crisis to obscure our ability to reason.

It was in the run up to Iraq that you and others actually put on rose colored glasses and drank the koolaid while I was saying, whoa wait let’s think about this. I had no love for Saddam, but the facts were not present in the case the administration was making. I hate being lied to, and I knew that was happening. And I didn’t have access to even half the info others do. My position was, Why are we rushing in here? We can take Saddam down on OUR timetable, and in doing so we have to wrap up Afghanistan and ensure that we have the forces and the money to do it. This wasn’t any feat of prognostication on my part. It was simple common sense, with a dash of knowledge of history and an understanding how these things play out in the hands of breathless humans.

Krugman may be clairvoyant; probably not. But a dumb guy like me whose support swings back and forth between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s doing a good job, saw this was a bad deal from the get-go. I’m a little resentful that my conscientious and throughtful objections are viewed as partisan hooey by the now-chagrined who think we all should have been hoodwinked, and we would have been, too, had we just been good Americans.

Feh."

I’m now overwhelmed by how many people say they now opposed the war all along because they could see that the WMD issue was invalid. It’s amazing so few made the case at the time.

Truly heart-breaking news. The Vatican hierarchy refuses to budge in its demonization of gay couples and famillies. And so Catholic Charities in Boston stop placing needy children in adoption altogether. I would have reluctantly acquiesced in the discrimination, just to help the majority of kids. But I respect the integrity of the lay Catholic board in refusing to give in to an invidious piece of discrimination; and Massachusetts for insisting that the only criterion for adoption be the safety and love in adoptive households, regardless of sexual orientation. The whole thing is sad. But that’s what bigotry does. Cruelty begets cruelty. And all in the name of love. All Catholics who do not share the bigotry of the hierarchy simply have to pray that one day, their hearts will open.

A friend who just landed in Baghdad gives a first-person account of the scene:

"Getting here was far less complicated than I had imagined, but with 48 hours of life on the Tigris under my belt, I feel blessed with the marvelous array of experiences this city offers.  Multiple encounters with white Toyota Landcruisers filled with black outfitted AK-47 totting Interior Ministry irregulars (a/k/a death squads), even more encounters with US and South African security contractors, which are even more threatening – each of these is enough to stop your heart. According to some here, the US contractors are the dumbest and the South Africans the meanest – what a hierarchy.

Today I witnessed – from a safe distance – my first car-bomb. Then went back to read reports of 13 judicially sanctioned executions, 32 extrajudicial killings discovered, 50 bodyguards taken hostage … Westerners talk about their hotels not in terms of spa amenities and availability of Starbucks, but based on the number of blast walls between the building and the street. So imagine where on earth people would think the arrival of a massive sandstorm was a blessing. I was amused to see Condi and Rumsfeld on TV – carried live on a local TV feed.  I watched it in a crowded lobby.  I’ll just say the reaction of those around me was derisive – no difference in that between the locals and the Americans, all of whom (except me and the journos) seem to be DOD contractors.  Possibly they’re even right about the use of the term "civil war."  If that evokes memories of Spain in the 30’s or America in the 1860’s it would be misleading.  What’s going on here is something very different from that.  It’s more a communal disintegration.  But 48 hours doesn’t turn one into an expert."

Nope. But sometimes, fresh eyes can see things other cannot.

With his usual accuracy and fairness, Paul Krugman smears yours truly today. Since he’s too important to have his columns available to non-subscribers, I can’t link. He has one decent point: yes, I lionized George W. Bush for a while after 9/11, and, in retrospect, my attempt to place trust in him at a time of national peril was a misjudgment. But then, in times of peril, some of us feel that supporting the president, whoever he is, and hoping he gets things right, are not contemptible impulses. I should have been more skeptical. In less dire circumstances, I might have been. But some of us, in the days after 9/11, did not immediately go into partisan mode, put aside some of our other objections (like the fiscal mess and the anti-gay policies), and rallied behind a president at war.

And yes, I criticized many whose knee-jerk response immediately after 9/11 was to blame America, and whose partisanship, like Krugman’s, was so intense they had already deemed Bush a failure before he even had a chance. But it is a gross exaggeration to say, as Krugman sweepingly does, that "I used to specialize in denouncing the patriotism and character of anyone who dared to criticize president Bush." Five days after 9/11, in an aside in a long essay, I predicted that a small cadre of decadent leftists in enclaves in coastal universities would instinctively side with America’s enemies. They did. Some still do. (Go read the piece to see whether you think the accusations against me are fair.) And yes, I should have been more attuned to the pragmatic arguments of those who opposed the Iraq war for prudential, not partisan, reasons: people like Scowcroft, not Krugman (who would have opposed anything this president did, regardless of its merits). But Krugman’s sweeping charge against me is unfair. Long-time readers will know this. And the record is out there.

He is also grossly distorting the historical record in my criticism of the president. I am not a "born-again" Bush-basher, suddenly seeing the light. My criticisms of the Bush fiscal policy began very early and were very strong, although I supported the tax cuts (still do) and my focus was entirely on spending. My worries about war conduct began almost immediately after the Iraq invasion; my opposition to the federal marriage amendment was instant and scathing; my horror at Abu Ghraib and what it revealed was also contemporaneous with the available information, and I have kept the administration to account ever since. I opposed entitlement expansion. I supported a gas tax; and defended the estate tax. And, as Krugman somehow fails to point out, I endorsed John Kerry last time around. To accuse me of silence until now is absurd. To say that he expects no "statements of remorse" is also a little off. Does this count:

"We have learned a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis and several thousand killed and injured American soldiers than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response to that is not more spin but a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me."

Sometimes, you can’t win.

But this much is also true: I want to win the war, and we have this president for the next three years. If he does good things, he still deserves our support; and so do the people of Iraq. He has made some constructive changes these past few months in Iraq, and I’m not going to give up hope now. Maybe I should have appreciated that the Bush administration’s "mendacity was obvious from the beginning." We can’t all be as clairvoyant as Krugman. But I gave them a chance. When America was attacked, I rallied behind them and hoped for the best. If a similar thing happened again, regardless of who was president, Democrat or Republican, I hope I would do exactly the same. My principle was "trust but verify." Maybe I was wrong to trust. But no one can fairly accuse me of not verifying.

We may be seeing the beginnings of a real backlash against religious fundamentalism. In the last few years, we have seen the actual agenda of the religious right revealed in America: a constitutional ban on any legal protection for gay couples, re-criminalization of all abortions, including rape and incest, opposition even to vaccines to prevent cancer, and so on. The situation is far more dire in many Muslim countries, where the conflation of politics and religion is far more complete and the violent methods of religious fundamentalists different in kind. But the essential goal is similar: the subjection of free people to religious doctrines they do not necessarily hold. In Indonesia, a beacon for hope in the Muslim world, the moderates may be fighting back:

"Indonesia’s parliament, which contains a large bloc of Islamic-based MPs, is debating whether to amend the criminal code to outlaw anything that could offend decency or "arouse lust" in children.

That includes husbands and wives kissing in public, unmarried couples living together and homosexual sex, along with any flash of thighs, navels, bottoms or breasts, punishable by up to 10 years in jail and fines of more than $A100,000.

Other provinces like Aceh have moved to implement sharia laws, often without the wide support of ordinary people."

The gradual revolt against these policies may take time to formulate, because for many, the threat seems vague for a while. But then you see it up close. And it isn’t pretty. I have a feeling we may be about to see a similar push-back in this country as well.

Well, they’ve set an absurd precedent; now they’ll have to live with it. The Pentagon has another major contract with another Dubai-owned company, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS). Money quote:

"ISS has more than 200 offices around the world and provides services to clients ranging from cruise ship operators to oil tankers to commercial cargo vessels. In the U.S., the company operates out of more than a dozen port cities, including Houston, Miami and New Orleans, arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores, among other things."

Michelle Malkin, it’s time for another conniption.

They’re shutting down Abu Ghraib prison. Whoever thought of coopting Saddam’s torture gulag for the coalition troops should have been fired long, long ago. But this is Rumsfeld’s DoD so no one is ever held responsible for anything. The prisoners will be transferred to Camp Cropper, another site where abuse of detainees has been amply recorded. But the name Abu Ghraib for a prison is still worth losing. The complex should be razed and a memorial built to the thousands of victims of Saddam. Why doesn’t the new government champion its demolition? Symbolism matters.

This amorphous term is the one now applied to the company which will run the ports previously owned by DP World. Much rejoicing on the xenophobic right. But surely, we need to know what this entity is before being relieved. The idea that simply because an entity is American it is categorially likely to be more concerned about security is an almost clinical example of mindless nativism. Meanwhile, I’m hoping for Halliburton. It’s an American entity whose ultimate victory would thrill both left and right.

A reader writes:

"I just read on your blog that you’re a conservative. I’ve been reading your blog for months now and I thought you were a liberal with a handful of wrongheaded opinions. I guess now I’ll think of you as an amazingly enlightened conservative."

LOL. Maybe my book will help sort this out. Let’s just say that if Michael Oakeshott can be described as a conservative, then so can I.

A young Indian girl defies the mullahs.