Month: October 2007

Perhaps the West’s most important ally in the battle against Islamist extremism is being lost. The latest Pew poll makes for distressing reading:

Of the 10 Muslim publics surveyed in the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes poll, for instance, the Turkish public showed the most negative views, on average, toward Westerners. The survey asked Muslims whether they associate people in Western countries such as the U.S. and European nations with a series of negative and positive characteristics, including "arrogant," "greedy," "immoral," "selfish," and "violent," as well as "generous" and "honest."

More here. Meanwhile, the knife-edge situation on the Iraqi border is beginning to mean a retrenchment from democratization in Turkey itself, and burgeoning ties between Iran and Turkey over their shared Kurdish minorities. Coming Anarchy worries:

The danger is that if the West continues to fail to provide Ankara with support and reassure it about future support, Turkey may start forging more serious diplomatic ties with less than savory neighbors like Syria and Iran, both of whom are hostile to European and American interests.

Greenwald worries about Malkinian rhetoric from a military public affairs officer. The drift toward a nakedly partisan military, operating primarily through partisan blogs and partisan journalists, is truly disturbing.

The CDC director gave Congressional testimony on the health effects of climate change last week. But her statement was cut from over 3,000 words to 1,500, omitting large parts of her prepared remarks. The Bushies’ explanation:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the prepared testimony went through an interagency review process and the Office of Science and Technology Policy did not believe that the science in the testimony matched the science that was in a report by the International Panel on Climate Change.

"She testified yesterday. Her spokesperson said that she was able to say everything she wanted to say," Perino said. "It was not watered down in terms of its science. It wasn’t watered down in terms of the concerns that climate change raises for public health."

One blogger has put together the whole statement, highlighting in red what was taken out. See for yourself is you think Perino is full of it.

I don’t see how anyone can be surprised by Ron Paul’s success. It’s the message, stupid, as summed up in this simple, powerful new ad. Doesn’t it seem like the kind of message and underdog spirit that often resonates with New Hampshire voters?

It seems to me that one issue we haven’t fully dealt with is the intersection of climate change and the dangers of WMDs and terrorism. Eqypt’s decision to embrace nuclear power brings this to mind. India is on the same track. Any real solution to our climate problems will surely involve building more nuclear power plants – and we should be doing more of that ourselves as well as encouraging many developing countries to do the same. But the knowledge behind nuclear reactors is very hard to insulate from the knowledge to make nuclear bombs. At some point, we really are going to have to rely on deterrence again. Deciding that every non-democracy, or state that could experience an Islamist take-over, cannot be allowed to get nukes is simply impractical. Like any sane person, I find the thought of the nutjobs in Tehran having nuclear know-how alarming. But it’s surely no more alarming than what we found out about the abuse and dissemination of nuclear knowledge in Pakistan, and less imminent than the danger of an Islamist deployment of Pakistani nuclear technology.

Read this from a guy who knows:

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

And Obama is effectively tied with Clinton. Iowa Democrats see that this is fast becoming a two-person race. Now focus.

David Kuo sees it as a spiritual, not political realignment:

I have been saying for the last year and see no reason to stop saying that the change that is occurring among evangelicals is most fundamentally a spiritual shift. Evangelicals have been part of the Great Sellout for the last eight years – worshipping at the altar of George W. Bush. They have seen what happens when Jesus is sold out for politics. I don’t see them rushing back anytime soon.

If evangelicals begin to realize what a poisoned chalice Christianism is, and how Christianity requires a far less partisan, strident and exclusionary spirit, there is great cause for hope. The Gospels have been abused and trashed by those seeking to use them for political gain for so long. The next struggle may well be to avoid a counter-reaction on the religious left, instead of listening to the transcendent message of the Gospels, which know no political party, and teach us to renounce earthly power, rather than to seize it. (Meanwhile, Jeff Sharlet disputes the entire Kirkpatrick thesis as a media perennial. Here’s hoping he’s wrong.)

A summary of the latest developments, although at this point, I confess to getting blurry.

An unconfirmed report, but he’s well-advised to stay in the US from now on, given his authorization of war crimes.