Month: December 2006

[Clive]

Yes, I’m extremely gloomy about Iraq, yet I’m also aware that it’s easy to pontificate on the subject without bothering to listen to the men and women at the sharp end. One source of useful information is Bill Roggio, a blogger who has been embedded with US forces. Via Glenn Reynolds comes a dispatch in which Roggio weighs up the successes and failures of liaison work between Marines and Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah.

Among the positive news about the performance of the Iraqis:

The soldiers are gathering their own intelligence, are planning and executing operations independently. They are able to adjust planning on the fly. And perhaps most importantly, they are independently developing intelligence section[s] at the company level. Counterinsurgency is largely a war of intelligence.

And a couple of ominous negatives:

Some soldiers and officers haven’t been paid in over a year. Some soldiers are talking about leaving the Army if they are not paid soon. The lower ranks strongly suspect senior officers are pocketing their pay. Soldiers that have left the military are also kept on the rolls and their paychecks are often pocketed by officers and ministry officials….

As there is no central banking system, soldiers must physically take their paychecks home. They are forced to travel home unarmed (the weapons are needed at the units, and there is fear the soldiers would sell the weapons), and the soldiers become targets for death squads.

Good to get some boots-on-the-ground perspective. I’m trying not to read too much into the fact that high in the list of plus points is that the Iraqis have a better understanding of the language and customs than the Marines. I hope that’s not the sound of someone whistling in the dark.

[Clive]

(Note to libertarians: I’m an agnostic on the issue, so after reading this post, send any hate-mail to David W, not to me. OK? Now read on…)

Alex’s very interesting reflections on the prospects for libertarianism reminded me of the comment by senior Tory politician, David "Two Brains" Willetts, in an interview earlier this year:

Someone described a libertarian as being someone in favour of childless immortals. My personal and autobiographical definition of conservatism is a free marketeer with children.

[Alex]

Admit it. You’ve always wondered how you might look as an all-singing, all-dancing, um, Elf.

Now you have your chance. Just go here.

Be warned, however, the results tend to be splendidly creepy.

[Alex]

Andrew warned us that his readers were an energetic, disputatious bunch. He wasn’t wrong. Thanks for all your emails.

A quick reminder: you can email Clive, Danny and myself just as you would ordinarily email Andrew – via the "email Andrew" link on the right hand side of the page.

[Clive]

Time for another choice in the blogger series. Next up is Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome.com, Britain’s most influential right-of-centre Web forum. Lately, he’s diversfied into on-line TV, launching 18 Doughty Street, the country’s first political Internet station. Walk through the door of that inconspicuous house in central London, and you find yourself deep in alternative pundit territory.

Every civilisation is as rich as its means of communication. That was a central conclusion of Neil Postman’s "Amusing Ourselves To Death" (1985). Cultures which communicate through smoke signals will inevitably be primitive. The 1980s ‚Äì the focus of Postman‚Äôs study – generated a passive culture, Americans spending increasing amounts of time consuming television programmes that were obsessed with the immediate and the trivial.  Postman died three years ago, but the blogosphere deserves the analysis he gave to TV.  I guess that he would hate the rushes to judgment of bloggers, but he would appreciate its devolution of power and the re-awakening of conversation between citizens.

[Alex]

At The Plank Jason Zengerle links to an Arizona Republic piece detailing John McCain’s success in raising money from people who gave money to George W Bush. Zengerle headlines his post "If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, cont’d."

But this recurring theme in the liberal blogosphere is, well, nuts. The argument – as best I can understand it – is that McCain’s ambition is such that he will sell any principle, accept any money that further his presidential ambitions and that this is entirely regrettable. Well, maybe so. But at some point a serious politician has to be serious about winning. And that inevitably means engaging with people who may not agree with you.

McCain, then, is pilloried for having the audacity to try and win – a messy, compromising business at the best of times. But ideological purity is for losers. It’s understandable that liberals would want to construct a narrative in which McCain sells his soul to the Republican right since, in some respects at leadst, McCain is the biggest obstacle (right now) to a Democratic victory in 2008, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything illegitimate or depressing about what McCain is trying to do. 

In any case taking money from the right doesn’t necessarily mean McCain is abandoning principle any more than would be the case with any other politician. He was sharply criticsed when he addressed Jerry Falwell’s Libery University last year for instance. But in fact McCain’s commencement address at Liberty was an eloquent call for tolerance, service and respect. 

I don’t know if it made McCain many friends at Liberty but I do know that I’d rather listen to a politician prepared to talk to people who don’t share his opinions than to one who always and only speaks to the choir and seeks to win simply by motivating his party’s base.

[Alex]

More on the lost tribe of American politics – I speak of libertarians, of course – as they wander through the wilderness seeking comfort and sanctuary and a place where they can live free and die content:

At Cato, David Boaz makes the point that "If Republicans can’t win New Hampshire and the Mountain West, they can’t win a national majority. And they can’t win those states without libertarian votes."

Meanwhile the Corner’s John Hood agrees: "Both parties are coalitions. The Democratic coalition, if it coheres, can win without libertarian-leaning folks. The Republican coalition cannot."

You would think this might concentrate Republican minds. But I wouldn’t bet on it doing so. I mean, it wasn’t just cynicism or makwishness that produced the Terri Schiavo travesty.

Libertarians best hope may be that Republicans realise it profits them nothing to pile up votes in the south if this costs them the mountain west. But that’s the sort of lesson normally learnt only in defeat. 

Right now, as Brink Lindsey observed in his TNR essay: "…in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the rival ideologies of left and right are both pining for the ’50s. The only difference is that liberals want to work there, while conservatives want to go home there."

Spurned by the right, unwanted by the left: no-one ever became a libertarian because they craved the applause of the crowd…

[Daniel]

One of the joys of the British blogging scene is Oliver Kamm’s extraordinary posting. He can spend 2,000 words explaining why he is turning on comment moderation and leave you riveted.

Recently, he used 4,000 words to dispose of a short letter by Professor Howard Zinn, but I promise you that you wouldn’t regret reading every word, even if you are not in the slightest bit interested in the academic disputes over Hiroshima. It’s just enjoyable watching an intellectual sledgehammer at work.

However, if you’re short of time, this quick post acts makes the case for optimism about the future of democracy, even with all the bad news.

[Daniel]

My request that you identify other expensive political items that are for sale on eBay has provoked an extraordinary response.

The best? The item found by Morten Morland (also known as Poldraw), the fantastic Times cartoonist, is hard to beat. And it is still for sale, with the bidding starting at 1 million dollars. You have 6 days left.

On Monday, Jun 19, 1972 the following story appeared in Time Magazine:

Now for the fill-in-the-blank portion of our test. Pencils ready? If Richard Nixon gives Leonid Brezhnev a Cadillac, then the Soviet leader should give the President a… well, what? What socialist product evokes the Communist system the way a Cadillac does U.S. capitalism? A personal, hand-controlled Sputnik? A collective farm?

It is a taxing problem, and the Russians have given up trying to solve it. Headed Nixon’s way by freighter is a gift from Moscow as capitalist as they come: a hydrofoil boat. If it arrives in time for the Republican Convention, Nixon will be able to rooster-tail through the waters of Biscayne Bay between his Florida home and the convention hall in true and glorious helmsman’s style.

According to the Watergate tapes the negotiations on the swap involved a great deal of hard work by H.R. Haldeman.

Extraordinarily, this boat is now for sale on eBay. It could be yours for Christmas.

[Clive]

At this stage in the game, I have no idea whether Mr O. would make a good president. I do like the cut of his jib, as they say, even allowing for Michael Barone’s absolutely reasonable point about his lack of experience. I was struck by an observation a commenter left on my blog the other day. I hadn’t looked at the issue in this light before:

I think that in one of the most important aspects, Obama is the most experienced of the lot. We have a serious problem when neither the political class nor the public have any kind of real sense of how their country looks from the outside. Obama, with his childhood years in Indonesia and his African roots, has an enormous edge in attaining the insider-outsider’s perspective that would be invaluable at a time like the present.

Now, I’d never expect Americans to vote for the candidate who wins the overseas beauty contest. (As the Guardian discovered in 2004, US voters don’t take kindly to being talked down to. Quite right, too.) But given the Bush administration’s truly dire record on public diplomacy, a president who acts as if he lives on the same planet as the rest of us might be a good idea.