Month: May 2006

Cato unveils a new study of this president’s war on limited government. Money quote:

Far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad … President Bush’s constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

Conservatives are beginning to fight back in earnest. Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch, authors of the new study, were once fiercely critical of president Bill Clinton on similar grounds. But Bush has made Clinton look much more like a small-government conservative than Bush has ever been.

A reader offers a provocation:

You print a letter that says Boston, MA is more like a "foreign country", i.e. the UK, than it is like Arizona. Once again, the tired reactionary Rovian slur that red states are real America while blue states are "foreign".

Let’s set this straight. Here’s the letter you should be printing:

"I am a native of Boston, Massachusetts, the epitome of Bunker Hill, Minutemen, Thanksgiving blue state America. I also have traveled extensively in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other fundamentalist theocracies. I have lived in North Carolina for the past year, and it is very intriguing to realize that North Carolina, and indeed the entire Bible Belt, is culturally and even politically much closer to a foreign country – the theocratic Middle East – than it is to other contiguous parts of the same country like Massachusetts."

Remember: the Northeast was and is the cradle of American ideals. It’s the Bob Jones theocrats who are, once again, attempting to create a foreign country on U.S. soil.

Fighting words – more inflammatory than I think justified. I might add to my own observations that Blue State Britain is perhaps closest in sensibility not to Boston but to Seattle, if only for climate and cultural reasons. And to my mind, the most fascinating development of the last two decades has been the conversion of freedom-loving California from a Republican stronghold to a Democratic bastion. Reagan’s home became Clinton’s base. Tells you something about where Reagan conservatism now lingers, I think.

A picture in hypocrisy.

"I’m wearing Armani," – Valerie Plame’s stock response to most questions directed her at last Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

One of the least remarked-upon facets of recent years has been the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the academic left. While they control many humanities departments, and have filled the minds of  many young people with idiocies it will take them years to shuck off, they have almost no substantive contribution to make to American society. Many enclaves of the academic left have actively longed for the defeat of the U.S. in Iraq; and are ambivalent between the West and its Islamist enemies. I think particularly of the gay academic left, so busy tying themselves into "queer studies" knots that they were utterly absent in the battles for marriage equality and military service. (And when they were not absent, they were busy criticizing advocates for gay equality for being "assimilationist.") Old-school lefty Todd Gitlin has a great new piece on their vacuousness in the Chronicle for Higher Education. Money quote:

[T]he academic left is nowhere today. It matters more to David Horowitz than to anyone else. The reason is that its faith-based politics has crashed and burned. It specializes in detraction. It offers no plausible picture of the world. Such spontaneous movements as do crop up in America ‚Äî like the current immigrant demonstrations ‚Äî do not emerge from the campus left. Neither do reformers’ intermittent attempts to eject the party of plutocracy and fundamentalism from power, to win universal health care, to protect the planet from further convulsions, to enlarge the rights of the least privileged. If more academics deigned to work toward reforms, they might contribute ideas about taxes, education, trade, employment, investment, foreign policy, and security from jihadists. But the academic left is too busy guarding the flame of nullification. They think they can fortify themselves with vigilance. In truth, their curses are gestures of helplessness.

Go read.

Time magazine, my corporate overlords, have just put out their list of the top one hundred leaders in the world. One of them is Ian Fishback, one of the great heroes of our current struggle against religious terrorism, who risked his career to expose abuse and torture sanctioned by the Pentagon civilian leadership in Iraq. Last year, many of you sent emails of support to this soldier, and I know they made a difference. The good news is that this West Point graduate is still at war, doing what he believes in; and that, with his help, the McCain Amendment passed last year. The bad news, of course, is that the president doesn’t regard himself as subject to laws passed by veto-proof majorities in the Congress. But Fishback’s record of honor, duty and country endures. My 2005 column explaining him to British readers can be found here. His letter to Senator McCain, rightly now an historical document, ends thus:

Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is "America."

He’s still fighting.

(Photo: Jamie Rose/New York Times.)

I’ve mentioned this before, and Michael Scheuer has now confirmed it publicly. Other administration officials confirmed to to me privately years ago now. In July 2002, the Bush administration had a clear chance to kill Zarqawi. They punted primarily because it would have derailed diplomacy in the run-up to the war. If they had bombed part of Iraq in July 2002, they might have made even Resolution 1441 impossible to achieve. Money quote from Scheuer:

"Mr Bush had Zarqawi in his sights almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn’t shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq. Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp … experimenting with ricin and anthrax … any collateral damage there would have been terrorists."

Die-hard anti-war types don’t have a huge amount of standing to criticize this in retrospect. I have no doubt some would have declared taking out Zarqawi as war-mongering back in 2002. But many of us on the pro-war side were very keen to kill Zarqawi while we could. The decision at the time was doubtless a hard call, given the legitimate balance to be struck between diplomacy and action. In retrospect, however, it may prove to be one of the three most costly moments in the war when Bush balked and terror advanced. The other moments, of course, were the decision to over-rule the military leadership and send far too few troops to secure Iraq after Saddam and the hesitation to take Fallujah the first time around.

A reader comments on my latest column:

I am a native of Phoenix, Arizona, the epitome of suburban soccer/security mom, Mcmansion red state America. I also have traveled extensively in the UK. I haved lived in Boston for the past year, and it is very intriguing to realize that Boston, and indeed the entire Northeast, is culturally and even politically much closer to a foreign county – the UK – than it is to other contiguous parts of the same country like Arizona.

I agree. I certainly think that the differences between London and Boston are smaller than those between Boston and, say, Houston, or Miami, or Phoenix. It might also help explain the strains within contemporary conservatism. A British Tory or a New England Republican will be a limited government, libertarian type. Such a person may well feel more comfortable among conservative Democrats or Independents right now than among big government, Fundamentalist Republicans. Similarly, many conservative Democrats might consider voting Tory in England – at least now that the Tories have a decent chance of getting their act together.

A reader writes:

Let me first give you a few brief words of my leftist credentials. I’m as stalwart a member of the left as anyone; I’m for the abolition of state-recognized marriage, much, much higher taxes, vastly expanded public education and housing and, ultimately, the collective democratic control of industry and commerce. I’m an atheist, think cars should have to get better than forty miles to the gallon to be sold, and I think most narcotics should be legal for recreational use. I am blue state, urban, stylish.

That having been said, I supported military intervention in Iraq though like you I’ve been critical of the handling throughout, and, like a lot of people on the left I know, I’m far more concerned about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran than anything else that could possibly happen on the global stage. While one can have a meaningful discussion about where the line must be drawn between acceptance of other cultures and intervening to protect human rights, it’s only prudent to say that Iran cannot possibly be permitted to join the nuclear club. One can believe that Iran has a "right" (whatever that means) to develop nuclear technology while simultaenously holding the view that allowing Iran to have that technology would be monumentally stupid.

This is the most maddening aspect of the war in Iraq and the one I feared an incompetent management of the after-war would enlarge. Because our military are stuck and the world community knows as well as we that the American public would never support a military strike on Iran, the President is unable to apply the kind of diplomatic pressure to stop Iran without military action. And the electoral fear that is being collectively experienced on the right combined with the pathetic and transparent pandering of those on the left who should know better can only contribute to a dismal situation in which we’ll be forced to confront a nuclear armed Iran knowing we could have, but chose not to, prevent. Had we never invaded Iraq this wouldn’t be a problem. We’d be better able to display the kind of potential force necessary to stop development; failing that, our elected leaders would have the kind of public support for a military action necessary to keep the nuclear club closed. But even having invaded Iraq, had the President and Defense Secretary made the kind of committment early on necessary to win the war, the President would still command the kind of support that he needs to deal with the real threat instead of the one he invented.

I strongly disagree with a great deal in the first paragraph. But the rest seems pretty coherent to me.

(Photo: AFP/Getty.)