Month: September 2006

The antidote to Rove?

Cawsand, Cornwall, England, 10 am, in peak summer.

Deservedly tossed from TNR.

A new movie from Israel, not yet released in the U.S., is about the place where the West’s freedoms are most directly engaged with the medieval barbarism of Islamist jihad. One reason I am unapologetic about my support for Israel, despite its many flaws and errors, is that it is on the front line of freedom.

Here’s John Derbyshire on "The Conservative Soul:"

Sullivan is broadly right about conservatism. For the preservation of liberty, the skeptical, dry, philosophically modest conservatism that Sullivan argues for is a much better bet than any system based on a belief that human beings, or their societies, can be transformed by state power.

That’s what the book is about. Derb then argues that the rest of the book is about being gay and Catholic. Just for the record (and this may be because Derb only skimmed much of the book): there is almost no discussion of the subject in the book. There is a serious attempt to describe a Christianity that is not fundamentalist, but that non-fundamentalist faith applies to everyone, gay, straight, male, female, young, old, and of every race and culture. Yes: it’s an argument for a Christianity based in love, sacrament, mystery, compassion and humility; it is an argument against excessive doctrinal obsession, minute moral regulation, and constant guilt. I have a feeling that many heterosexual Christians will understand what I’m getting at.

The book, due out October 2, can be pre-ordered here.

I’ve never found New Year’s Day a very interesting occasion. It tends to be cold and dark, comes just after the ordeal of Christmas, and you tend to be surrounded by drunks. But early September really is the time I feel a new year beginning. I guess I’m still a student at heart, eager for the new term. It’s cold and rainy in Provincetown this Sunday, but there’s still a sense of newness in the air.

My break was wonderful. I didn’t look at the internets for ten days. I read no blogs. In Amsterdam, the most contact I had with the outside world was the European version of the Financial Times. It’s the most relentlessly tedious newspaper I have ever read. But they delivered it to my hotel room each morning, and I was able to keep up with various Belgian bank mergers, which was oddly comforting in a world approaching Armageddon. Amsterdam was a trip, as you might expect, hanging with an old friend and the South Park gang. I’m sorry to say I remember very little about any of it, except it was extremely beautiful, and it is unwise to eat the space cakes. It was nonetheless eye-opening to visit a free country, compared with the U.S. Observing people actually allowed to relax over a joint and a cappuccino in a coffee-house, or buy some soul-expanding mushrooms at small, regulated stores as common as Starbucks was a reminder that not every society is terrified of pleasure or freedom or happiness. I’d like to offer my deepest thanks to David, Michael and Ana-Marie for filling in for me so ably while I was gone. It’s great to be back.

Since I believe Andrew has copyrighted the term "YouTube of the Day," I won’t use it; but this video (via Tom Tomorrow) deserves to be seen by every bright-eyed boy and girl.

by David Weigel

Is there any possible political downside to a Democratic attack on Donald Rumsfeld? I don’t think so.

Under assault from Republicans on issues of national security, congressional Democrats are planning to push for a vote of no confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this month as part of a broad effort to stay on the offensive ahead of the November midterm elections.

In Rumsfeld, Democrats believe they have found both a useful antagonist and a stand-in for President Bush and what they see as his blunders in Iraq. This week, Democrats interpreted a speech of his as equating critics of the war in Iraq to appeasers of Adolf Hitler, an interpretation that Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff disputed. But Democrats said the hyperbolic attack would backfire.

Rumsfeld has been the least popular figure in the administration for a while now; a few months ago, only 67 percent of Republicans thought he deserved to keep his job. The pro-war spin that Rumsfeld’s "I’m OK, you’re an appeaser" speech would redound to the GOP’s benefit came from a belief that the "Islamofascist" meme was going to breathe new life into the administration’s popularity; I think the meme was tainted by association with the Defense Secretary and his catastrophic tenure in office. It’s more likely that Republicans will get on the "dump Rumsfeld" train than they’ll make hay and fight Democrats over it.

By Michael J. Totten

KARNI TERMINAL, ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER — The Israeli Defense Forces found and collapsed a 200 meter-long and 12 meter-deep tunnel one kilometer inside the Gaza Strip that terrorists intended to reach all the way into Israel. The tunnel was located near the Karni Terminal, a now-closed crossing point for goods and material from Israel into Gaza. Gun battles erupted near the entrance to the tunnel before the charges were detonated as tanks guarded the terminal itself. 20 gunmen were killed.

“The plan was to use the tunnel for suicide bombings at Karni,” IDF Major Tal Lev-Ram told me as we heard sub-machine gun fire in the distance. “I can’t understand it. Karni is their lifeline, their life. This is the biggest reason we closed it. It’s hard to understand why they keep doing these things at the crossing points unless they are trying to make life harder in Gaza.”

Two months ago Palestinian police stopped a car bomber heading toward Karni. Six months ago the IDF stopped three terrorists with M-16s, grenades, and suicide bomb belts at the Erez crossing point where people, rather than goods, transit into and out of Gaza.

On June 25 of this year, eight terrorists used a tunnel much like the one just found near Karni to kidnap the young Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and steal him away into Gaza. The tanks guarding Karni belong to his unit.

Click here to see a video clip of the tunnel’s controlled collapse.

by David Weigel

John Tabin sees gas prices falling and wonders how this will affect the Great Democratic Comeback of 2006.

The funny thing about Bush is how closely his approval ratings correlate to gas prices. So if it’s true that the price at the pump is poised to keep falling for months, shouldn’t we be more optimistic about the GOP’s fortunes this November?

I think so. I posed this to a few Republicans at an America’s Future Foundation happy hour last night, and their eyes lit up like I’d just told them Rick Santorum had free tickets to Springsteen and wanted them to come with. It’s a cliche at this point, but it’s also completely true that shelling out $50 to fill a tank of gas has convinced most Americans, against all the macro evidence, that the economy sucks. A sudden 50 cent-per-gallon drop in that price by November would completely change that mentality. Good thing there’s absolutely zero chance of a crisis in the Middle East in the next 68 days.