Month: February 2007

Jonah Goldberg runs an interesting email from a partisan Republican. It reminds me how much the base really does suspect McCain. Money quote:

The big problem with McCain is that he repeatedly takes a high profile stand for the Democrats on important partisan issues. He does this on important policies like W’s tax cuts and torture legislation, and of course campaign finance. Even on the war he has often given credibility to the left’s rhetoric about Rumsfeld, torture, administration incompetence, etc., even though he’s been solid on the core substance. Its not just that he occasionally votes with the Democrats, its that he’s willing to become their chief spokesman when he does it. Sure he may hold conservative views on 80% of the issues, but the other 20% seems to be what he really cares about.

What’s interesting to me is that the writer doesn’t actually discuss the merits of the issues involved. On the vital matter of a critical war, what is important is not whether a Republican senator address failures or missteps, but that he either support the administration’s talking points or side with the Democrats. That’s the only relevant choice. You see here the poisonous influence of faction, as the founders feared, inhibiting critical debates about strategy in wartime. But it is good to see more candor from the emailer. The president has indeed proposed and had enacted "torture legislation". The bad news is that the mainstream right now acknowledges the authorization of torture and supports it.

"The Road To Serfdom" in cartoons. Just 18 pages!

There is hope for the gay rights movement – just don’t expect it from the failed Hillary cronies at the Human Rights Campaign. Here’s a fascinating piece by Josh Green in the new Atlantic on the efforts of mega-wealthy Tim Gill, founder of Quark, to jump-start gay political organizing. Believe it or not, Gill’s people are actually organizing in several states; they have outreach to … Republicans! And they are getting results. Money quote:

In 2000, [Gill] gave $300,000 in political donations, which grew to $800,000 in 2002, $5 million in 2004, and a staggering $15 million last year, almost all of it to state and local campaigns… On Election Day, fifty of the seventy targeted candidates were defeated, Danny Carroll among them; and out of the thirteen states where Gill and his allies invested, four — Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington — saw control of at least one legislative chamber switch to the Democratic Party.

But Gill is too smart to believe that gay equality will be achieved through the Democratic party alone. He comes from a Republican family, has made some key Republican hires, and hopes one day to give equally to both parties. It’s an obvious strategy – focused, bipartisan, local. Funny how the Human Rights Campaign has sucked millions out of gay wallets and never achieved anything like this success. Still, they have a big new building, more fundraisers than lobbyists, and lots of jobs lined up for the Hillary administration. By their own objectives, they’re doing fine. But their record in national legislation? Close to absolutely nothing.

A chronology.

It’s good to see I still irritate the bejeezus out of him. Memo to Eric: you don’t have to read this, you know. And thanks, Ann.

David Corn has a very helpful summary of the closing arguments in the Libby trial. I have no idea what the jury will find. But I don’t think this is a petty issue. I do think that the question of whether the vice-president deliberately misled the president and the country about pre-war WMD intelligence is critical. The Wilson affair is strong circumstantial evidence to me that Cheney had something to hide. Fitzgerald may agree:

Winding up, Fitzgerald aimed at the entire Bush crew. "There’s a cloud over the White House as to what happened" in the leak affair, he told the jury. There were questions as to whether the law was broken when Valerie Wilson’s CIA cover was blown and "what role the defendant played…what role the vice president played." Looking straight at the jury, Fitzgerald asked, "Don’t you think the FBI and the grand jury is entitled to straight answers." Instead, he said, Libby made up a story and obstructed justice. Echoing Wells’ last lines, Fitzgerald declared of Libby, "He stole the truth from the judicial system. Give truth back." With that, Fitzgerald was done.

Reasonable doubt? It’s a tough hurdle. We may find out no more. But Fitzgerald was absolutely right to try.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

Here’s a great one from 1952. No, you’re not stoned.

A soldier writes:

I honestly believe that the Army is fixing its appalling mess at Walter Reed. But that it took WaPo’s Dana Priest to bring it to anyone’s attention tells me one thing: that it’s been going on a while. The Army is certainly taking the right course on this one – owning up to fault, immediately fixing the situation. But I can’t believe for a minute that no one with any real rank had no clue that Soldiers with brain trauma were put in charge of lower ranking Soldiers with equal or worse injuries.  I have no doubt that people knew but were simply overwhelmed with the crush of patient intake. 

Of course, Army Secretary Harvey told WaPo today that the command had NCOs not doing their jobs. With all due respect, Secretary Harvey, that’s interesting, but irrelevant. The very idea of blaming subordinate non-commissioned officers is repugnant. They are not commissioned – they are not up for public scrutiny.  Commissioned officers, say, the commander of that hospital or the Army Surgeon General or the Chief of Staff of the Army – or political appointees – they are up for public scrutiny and should be held accountable.  To blame NCOs "not doing their jobs" is the worst kind of passing of the buck and is all to familiar, I’m afraid, for those tied to this administration.

My only hope is that this causes a ground swell of both concern AND action. It’s one thing to say "those poor Soldiers. Damn this administration." It’s something else entirely to actually do something about it. Start a 501(c)(3) that funnels real help to those Soldiers and Marines who return to face nothing.  Something.  Anything. The Army – given its extremely limited resources faced against the challenge of a multi-front war – clearly can’t do it all on its own.

A British Muslim kills his entire family because they were too Western. Money quote:

Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.

On Hallowe’en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancashire, and set it alight.

Caneze Riaz, 39, woke and tried to protect her three-year-old child, Hannah, who was sleeping with her, but was overcome by fumes. Her other daughters, Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, and Alisha, 10, died elsewhere in the house. Riaz, who had spent the evening drinking, set himself on fire and died two days later.

So much of Islam’s violence seems to stem from men’s fear of losing control of women.

A reader writes this about Mark Steyn’s assertion that Serbian genocide was a response to the Serbs’ being "out-bred" by Muslims:

It’s true that the demographic balance between Muslims and Serbs shifted. But not because the Muslims had more kids! Quite the opposite.

In Bosnia, the Muslims tended to be richer and better educated … they were descendants of the old ruling class, after all. They were much more likely to be lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. Bosnian Serbs had originally been the peasant class; their descendants were still more likely to be farmers, or (if educated) soldiers, policemen, or government officials.

So, the Muslims usually had fewer kids than the more rural Serbs. Then why did the number of Serbs decrease? Because the Serbs tended to drift out of Bosnia and into Serbia, especially to Belgrade. That was the capital, the big city with the bright lights. Bosnian Muslims, on the other hand, tended to stay put in Bosnia.

There’s a twist here: the Bosnian Serbs who moved to Serbia tended to be the most ambitious and best educated. As a result, the ones left behind grew steadily more rural, backwards and bigoted. And this was a major reason for the violence in Bosnia: the Muslims considered the Serbs a bunch of dumb, violent rednecks, while the Serbs resented the Muslims as a lot of overeducated, snotty ponces. Bosnia wasn’t a "clash of civilizations". It was what you get when a culture war turns septic.

And it’s one reason to attempt to prevent our own culture war going the same way. The premise of Steyn’s entire "argument" is that Muslims will win the civilizational war by "out-breeding" pansy-ass Westerners. There’s an interesting debate to be had here, about "natalist" and "non-natalist" societies. But Steyn doesn’t come close to grappling with it. It would ruin the gags. I note solely that the words he uses literally dehumanizes the enemy. And it dehumanizes all Muslims, regardless of their sect, politics or assimilation. The use of language to dehumanize the enemy is usually a precursor to abusing or killing them, or acquiescing in both. It is the mark of a deeply illiberal mindset.