Month: April 2006

I haven’t yet read Ramesh Ponnuru’s book, "The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life." Ponnuru is a highly intelligent and reasonable writer, although his religious fundamentalism alarms me, and I’ve no doubt he has some interesting things to say. I may even agree with some of it. But this much I can say: the title of the book is reprehensible. To call half the country "a party of death" and to assign that label to one’s partisan political opponents is not, whatever else it is, an invitation to dialogue. It’s demagoguic abuse. It’s worthy of Ann Coulter (who, tellingly, has a blurb on the cover). It is one thing to argue that you are pro-life, to use the positive aspects of language to persuade. It is another to assert that people who differ from you are somehow "pro-death," (especially when they may merely be differing with you on the moral status of a zygote or the intricacies of end-of-life care). To smear an entire political party, and equate only one party with something as fundamental as life, is a new low in the descent of intellectual conservatism from Russell Kirk to Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh is already on-message:

Ramesh Ponnuru tells the story of how the Democrats became the party of abortion-on-demand and euthanasia, and lost the support of most Americans in the process. He hasn’t just written an engaging guide to the Party of Death–he’s written a non-vitriolic battle plan on how to defeat it.

Conservative writers have now made fortunes calling their partisan opponents traitors, godless, and now pro-death. Their rhetoric increasingly equates being a Christian with being a Republican. I never thought someone as civilized and intelligent as Ponnuru would sink to this kind of rhetoric. But it tells you something about the state of conservatism that he has.

Some bloggers have misunderstood my post yesterday on the use of torture in a Tennessee drug-war case and its connection to Bush administration policies. Of course I don’t blame Bush for what rogue cops in Tennessee are doing. I was merely making a more general, and conventional, point that the president does indeed set a moral standard for the country. George W. Bush himself made this argument in his first election campaign when he ran against the legacy of Bill Clinton. Bush’s moral standard is that imprisoning suspects without trial, stripping them of due process, and abusing and torturing them is morally defensible. That defining down of our moral and legal compass matters. Radley Balko elaborates the point here.

"George Orwell’s point regarding language was that society cannot face political issues unless it calls things what they are; the purpose of political euphemism, Orwell wrote, is to prevent clear thought. People living here without visas are illegal immigrants and people jailed without charge are prisoners. Politicians might be addicted to fudging words but the media, at least, should call things what they are," – Gregg Easterbrook, back blogging.

"My love for the SECDEF has nothing to do with Rummy being on my side. He is not when it comes to troop strength or military restructuring. I’m with Colin Powell in those debates. You don’t win wars on the cheap, you don’t cut troop strength and you don’t leave an opening for the enemy by giving the generals less than they ask for. The hell with fair fights. We should demand "shock and awe" as a military strategy, not a campaign slogan.

Oh yeah. And one final thought for my anti-war friends. Running off Rumsfeld will only prove what hawks like me have been saying from the beginning of this war: that we need more trained killers in Iraq, not less. That we need more instruments of death in Iraq, not less. And that our Secretary of Defense’s biggest mistake in Iraq was not failing to make peace, but failing to make war in the most ruthlessly efficient way possible.

Hmmm. Maybe we need a new leader at the Pentagon after all," – Joe Scarborough, in a column called "Rummy the Dove".

A new poll shows how fair-minded most people in this country are. And why the xenophobia being stirred up on the far right is a very dangerous weapon for the GOP.

A reader remonstrates:

You’ve been hammering away at Rumsfeld for quite a while now, and I completely agree with you that he is awful and should have been fired 2 years ago. However, when you write that:

"the evidence is simply overwhelming that this (in my view) noble, important and necessary war was ruined almost single-handedly by one arrogant, overweening de facto saboteur. That man is Donald Rumsfeld. It’s actually hard to fathom how one single man could have done so much irreparable damage to his country’s cause and standing; and how no one was able to stop him."

I think you go too far – the problem isn’t only Rumsfeld, but the war itself.  Pinning all the blame on one person is simply a way for people who supported the invasion from the beginning to get themselves off the hook for not anticipating the wars failures.  I haven’t read "Cobra II," but I have read George Packer’s "The Assassin’s Gate," which clearly describes how incredibly broken Iraqi civil society was at the time of the invasion.

Sure, if someone competent had been running the Pentagon, the Iraqi Army might not have been dissolved, the initial looting might have been prevented, etc..  But this would not have resolved the problematic fact that Iraq was an extremely troubled society–that the psychic wounds of Saddam’s dictatorship had poisoned the populace in untold ways.

We can blame the captain of the Titanic for many things, but we cannot blame him for the iceberg.

Some good points. Iraq was always going to be extremely tough. We under-estimated the appalling damage Saddam had already wrought on Iraqi civil society (which makes removing him even more morally defensible). However brilliantly we conducted the war and occupation, the deep ethnic divisions would have emerged, and the psychic wounds of the past revived. A patient in a fever doesn’t always mean he’s nearing death; it may even be a symptom of recovery. (I might add that Rummy is someone I have known personally for years, and always liked immensely. But such personal attachments have to be set aside in assessing national policy.)

But what I cannot forgive, as Cobra II elaborates, is how many mistakes were predicted by the military, and many alternatives to failure offered, only to be continuously, almost pathologically, rejected out of hand by Rumsfeld. On the question of troop levels, Rumsfeld was criminally reckless, as he was in arrogantly dismissing the rioting and looting and terror such inadequate policing unleashed. He was warned; he had plenty of opportunities to reverse course; but his own fanatical attachment to his own transformational theories overwhelmed all reason, all empirical evidence, all advice from the ground, and so many in the CIA, State Department and military. To persist in deliberate error out of pride and zeal, as he has done, is to prefer dogma to reality. When lives are at stake, and the whole future of democracy in the Middle East, that’s unforgivable. But for me at least, Rumsfeld’s deep involvement in the new military detention policies supercedes everything else. He has not just failed; he has dishonored his country’s reputation. He has offered to resign twice. What more does Bush need?

The apparatchik-turned-pundit hails the pundit-turned-apparatchik:

The fact that Tony has criticized the President in print helps Bush much more than it hurts him. Proves he’s reached beyond the Austin circle for some independent advice. Snow doesn’t just tolerate his former colleagues in the press corps; he likes them. He’s smart but not overbearing and speaks with style and a smile. All that should help Bush in the briefing room. Perhaps even better for Bush, Snow is a movement conservative with a real following in the country. The GOP and the President need to pump up enthusiasm at the grassroots before November. Having Snow at the podium and on the airwaves every day should help at the margins.

It seems to me that this gets things the wrong way round. What Bush needs to do is bring in actual senior staff people who understand and want to reverse his profligate fiscal policy, his incoherent energy policy, and his shambolic war-management. What Bush has – typically – done is get a spokesman, who doesn’t set policy, to appeal to alienated conservatives. It is literal window-dressing. Unless, of course, more is going on than meets the eye. Here’s hoping that’s true.

(Photo: Fox News).

I’ve been skimming a new book in the mail, and it looks like it’s worth closer inspection. It’s called "America Against the World," and it’s a mainly empirical, psephological take on how other countries view America and why America is different from so many other places. It’s a complicated piece of work, but it reminds me why, twenty-one years ago, six weeks after arriving here, I wrote to tell my parents: no offense, but I’ve found a home. Two key characteristics that distinguish Americans are religious belief and the notion that the individual is responsible for his own destiny. Suddenly, after secular, class-based England, I didn’t feel so isolated.

But the data also reveal a stunning unraveling of global good feelings toward the U.S. in the past few years. Anyone who has been abroad lately will testify. My trip in London was mainly filled with social engagements with British Tories: probably the most sympathetic sub-group America has in Europe (with the exception of the Poles). They all seem terribly discouraged by the trends in the U.S. and completely befuddled by the conduct of the war. Many Europeans were never going to give the U.S.the benefit of the doubt. But we seem to have lost the few who would.

In 1999 – 2000, 83 percent of Brits had a favorable opinion of the U.S. That’s now 55 percent. Among the Germans, the percentage has dropped from 78 percent to 41. Among Turks, 52 to 23. But buried in the stats, there are also some glimmers of hope. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, there’s been a revival in the last two years in a few places. The biggest surge in pro-U.S. sentiment is in Jordan and Morocco. Moroccans had a 77 percent pro-American rating in 2000. That collapsed to 27 in 2004 but perked up to 49 again in 2005. Jordan, after a similar slump, has just gone from 5 percent pro-American in 2003 to 21 percent last year. Even the French have become more pro-American in the last year. Maybe we are at a turning point. And if we can hang on in Iraq, and show some results, we can begin to achieve what we were hoping for when we began to fight back against Islamism. So much has been lost; but that gives us all the more to win back. Or is my instinctual optimism clouding my judgment?

I’ve always had perfectly pleasant dealings with Tony Snow, and respect his commitment to genuine conservatism and to fighting the war on Islamist terror. I also agree with him that this president has "lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc." I agree that "George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion." I agree with him that "when it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can‚Äôt say no." I agree with Tony that "on the policy side, Bush has become a classical dime-store Democrat." I agree with him that

No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives. Nearly 57 months into his administration, President Bush has yet to veto a single bill of any type. The only other presidents never to issue a veto – William Henry Harrison and James Garfield – died within months of taking office. The budget has grown nearly 50 percent on his watch, and he is vying to become the most free-spending president ever. To date, he has not asked Congress to rescind even a penny in profligate spending (even Bill Clinton requested more than $8 billion in rescissions, and Ronald Reagan sought upward of $80 billion).

But I’m not going to stand in front of the press and defend this record now, am I? The first question Snow may get if he takes the job is about his own splendid eviscerations of this president’s rank betrayal of fiscal conservatism and limited government in the past. Good luck, Tony. You’ll need it.

(Hat tip: ThinkProgress.)

"[T]he biggest challenge facing Democrats right now is that they are perceived as standing for nothing. If they are not willing to step into the breach and stand against torture until someone tells them it’s polling well, it’s a terrifyingly apt critique," – Jane Hamsher, firedoglake.