Month: January 2007

How did Fred Kagan go from advocating a surge of 80,000 troops as necessary for success in Baghdad last December 4 to only 30,000 last December 27? Greg Djerejian wants to know.

In trying to understand how George W. Bush destroyed conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy, the figure of Michael Gerson is critical. In his religious fundamentalism and economic and social liberalism, Gerson epitomizes the withering of the tradition of limited government, personal responsibility and individual freedom on the right. It’s government’s task, in Gerson’s eyes, to tackle most every human problem – from family breakdown to religious upheaval in the Middle East – or face the terrible epithet of being deemed morally "cold". Freedom means selfishness to Gerson, because free people don’t always act up to his exacting moral standards. This quote captures Michael’s philosophy perfectly:

Campaigning on the size of government in 2008, while opponents talk about health care, education and poverty, will seem, and be, procedural, small-minded, cold and uninspired. The moral stakes are even higher. What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.

If you don’t believe big government is the answer to the problems of poverty, you have no mercy? Suddenly, Bush’s attack on the conservative soul becomes more comprehensible.

The British prime minister has been politically destroyed by the Iraq war. Gerard Baker believes the opprobrium is excessive:

People used to shout ‘fascist’ at Margaret Thatcher but I don’t really ever think their heart was in it. With Mr Blair it’s deadly serious. Imagine the raucous, triumphant, mocking Shia at Saddam Hussein’s execution ‚Äî minus the beards ‚Äî and you have a sense of what most of these people feel about the Prime Minister.

(Photo: Luke McGregor/AP).

They’ve flipped – according to the latest AP/Ipsos poll. Noam Scheiber notices:

While 52 percent of Republicans support the surge according to a just-released AP/Ipsos poll, some 60 percent of white evangelicals oppose it, as do 56 percent of self-described conservatives.

So we have the beginnings of what I referred to today on the Chris Matthews’ Show: an anti-war, socially conservative surge in the Republican party. Now all you have to do is add economic populism to that mix, and you’ve got yourself a powerful electoral combination. Is this the horse Sam Brownback plans to ride in on? Someone surely will.

(Photo: Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.)

For stating the obvious about the president’s exhausted speech, Peggy Noonan gets tagged with the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" by Hugh Hewitt’s side-kick, Dean Barnett. At some point, someone will surely point out that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is more accurately applied to those who still believe the president is even minimally competent. Like Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt, for whom Bush is still one notch down from Lincoln.

"I would not leave the region. I would not even threaten to leave the region. The idea that by threatening to leave the region will cause the political players to become sufficiently frightened that they will get their act together politically—I don’t necessarily believe that. I would stay in the region because we cannot afford this to become a regional conflict, but we might need to back away from the center of the conflict and let that fire burn, while keeping our troops in the north and perhaps on the southern border. And there is much that we can do, to keep both Iran and their Sunni neighbors from coming in massively to augment that conflict between the Shi‘a and the Sunnis. To let the fire burn in the center—this is an Arab conflict; it’s not Kurdish conflict; it’s an Arab-Sunni-Shi‘a conflict—and let conflict burn itself out," РGeneral Charles G. Boyd, National Interest.

That’s pretty much where I’ve come out on this. Get to Kurdistan and the borders and let them have their civil war. We can even exploit it for our own purposes, if we get smart enough.

A reader writes:

I agree with Rod Dreher, and with you, except that I am not "conflicted to be called" a conservative. I am still conservative, whether or not the Republican White House and congress were true to conservative principles.

However, the failure was really one that religious people have talked about for centuries: pride.  I think all of the greatest Republican errors over the past six years were committed as the result of it.  Politicians are never very short on it, are they? I do think that Bush had good motivations in invading Iraq, whether to find WMDs or to topple the cruel Hussein regime, but only pride and arrogance can explain the attempt to establish democracy in the Middle East, especially in an Islamic country.  He meant well, perhaps, but there never really was a chance. The old-fashioned religious virtue of humility would not have changed anything about 9/11, but might have prevented the current mess in the Middle East and the foreign policy disaster that has followed.

This is why conservatives stand not only for fiscal responsibility and governmental restraint, but also for traditional values. There might be some we should give up, but not hurriedly and definitely not without a careful analysis of the costs.

If by traditional values, we mean honesty, manners, personal responsibility, marriage, family and friendship, then I’m for them as well. If they mean government’s intervention in people’s bedrooms, end-of-life and reproductive decisions, and religious beliefs, then I’m against them.

Hong Kong, 9.22 am.

Dan Drezner sees through the flim-flam:

[W]hat Bush is proposing now is exactly what happened in Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia.  In each case:

1) The United States suffered a pivotal attack that altered their perception of the enemy (the Tet Offensive, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, and the 1993 Black Hawk Down incident);

2) The American response at some point after the attack was a show of escalation, not de-escalation (Nixon/Kissinger escalation in Vietnam, naval and air bombardments in Lebanon, six-month force expansion in Somalia);

3) After this display of strength, the U.S. withdraws;

4) Despite the increase in forces and retaliatory attacks, everyone recognizes the withdrawal for what it was.

I see very little reason to go through this charade again … but I’m willing to listen to commenters who disagree. To them, I must ask – how will the surge option be anything other than a more grandiose version of the Clinton administration’s response to the Somalia bombings?

What Glenn says – I agree with every word of it.