Month: March 2006

A reader writes:

"Andrew, face it:  The Iraq debate is so over, and the interventionist argument has lost.  At best – and that best is very far from certain – Iraq will be an Islamist, theocratic, Iran-dominated state, even with the insurgency suppressed.  Women will have far fewer rights than they had under Hussein; in fact, in large parts of the country their oppression will be total.  Once the U.S. leaves, I would bet heavily that in time some of Iraq’s oil revenue will be diverted to support Hezbollah and Hamas and others of that ilk, under Iran’s influence.  Democracy is great, but when the Islamist element has all the guns, and the willingness to use them, the moderates will be rendered irrelevant.  We will live to see them curse our name.

I think Bush was wrong to go in as quickly as he did, and without international support. That was a huge error, but one that could have been salvaged – even in the absence of WMDs – if the war and its aftermath had been competently and honestly executed. It wasn’t, in part because the war had to be sold as a low-cost operation to gain public support, but mostly because – it is now clear – George Bush is one of the most mediocre presidents to ever hold that office.  Even worse, as the Katrina experience revealed, he lacks a fundamental moral seriousness, his professed religiosity notwithstanding. I first realized this the night of that now infamous correspondents’ dinner, when he was making jokes about not finding weapons of mass destruction. Try to imagine Abe Lincoln or FDR doing something like that during wartime. The consequences in Iraq of this failed leader are apparent – though for some reason not to you. At some point, surely, experience must triumph over hope. Andrew, that point’s been reached."

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield," – George Orwell, 1946.

You might think that the power of a blog is restrained in an authoritarian country like China. This charming tale of a Chinese blogger’s parody of a celebrated film-maker is proof that we have yet to see the full potential of the medium. Money quote:

"Hu’s spoof on Chen’s work is entitled ‘The Bloody Case that Started from a Steamed Bun’. It basically takes Chen’s poignant mythic drama and ridicules it by refashioning the story line into a mock legal-investigative TV program. The video ricocheted quickly around the blogosphere and e-mail networks at the turn of the year, becoming one of the most downloaded video clips on the Chinese Net, according to Chinese press reports.

Hu’s efforts also started getting picked up by newspapers and magazines, and eventually became a national story on Chinese TV. Says Hu: ‘I didn’t expect the video to spread so widely on the Internet,’ he says. ‘And I didn’t expect Chen Kaige to see this film.’"

But he did. And then … well, the rest of the story sounds remarkably American.

If you’ll pardon he expression. The ever-patient, ever-logical Jon Rauch makes one more point against the notion that encouraging gay people to marry and settle down will somehow discourage straight people to do the same.

Some more detail on how well-versed the president was before the war that a) no agencies in his own government believed that Saddam would attack the U.S. unless provoked, and b) there was serious internal debate within the government over whether Saddam’s imported aluminum tubes proved an attempt to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. Bush subsequently gave speeches warning of Saddam’s nuclear program and of his gathering threat to the U.S.

You thought they couldn’t get any dumber? You thought wrong.

"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear," – George Orwell.

A few emailers have asked what I see troubling in the Alito thank you note to Dr James Dobson. First, Supreme Court Justices should be very careful associating with overtly political entities, and you don’t get much more political than Dobson. Secondly, Dobson himself read it out loud on the air to brag of his influence on national affairs. Thirdly, there is more than just a hint of a constitutional quo for a political quid in the letter. That kind of horse-trading undermines the integrity of the court and the impartiality of the justices. Look: I endorsed Alito. But I hoped his jurisprudence would not amount to a carte blanche for whatever the Christianists demand. The letter suggests otherwise.

"Well, I’m with Bill Buckley and George Will. This pig’s ear is never going to be made into a silk purse, not by any methods or expenditures the American people are willing to countenance. The only questions worth asking about Iraq at this point are: How does GWB get out of this with the least damage to US interests, and to his party’s future prospects? I wish I had some answers." – John Derbyshire, giving up on Iraq, today. I’m still not with him, although I am fuly aware of the cogency of many of his points.

Here’s a must-read blog post on how the Anglican primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, long supported by many Christianists in the U.S., has gone further than simply supporting a law that would criminalize homosexuality and speech about homosexuality, but has also threatened violence against Muslims in the country. Money quote:

"In response to recent violence following the cartoons depicting the Prophet, and violent and aimless reprisals against Christians and Christian churches, Akinola said in a statement "may we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation" and that "C.A.N. [Christian Association of Nigeria] may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue". That was Tuesday of last week (2/21), just as anti-Christian violence in the north over the previous weekend claimed at least 43 lives (some say at least 50) in the predominantly Muslim cities of Maidugiri and Bauchi. On Tuesday (2/21) and Wednesday (2/22), retaliatory attacks against Muslims in the southeastern Christian city of Onitsha claimed 80 more … Of course, it is unclear from news reports whether the timing of Akinola’s statement led directly in any way to the retaliatory attacks on southern Muslims, but the statement certainly offered no effort of reconciliation."

The blogger is too kind. In the West, the theocratic tendencies of the religious right have very rarely tipped into violence; and there is no equivalence with the terror of Islamists. But in the developing world, that may not be the case any more. Nigeria is Ground Zero for the new wars of religion. And some Americans are on the wrong side.