Month: December 2008

Mumbai should not cause us – or India – to panic. How many Indians died in Mubai over those few days from traffic accidents or preventable disease? Schneier elaborates:

If there’s any lesson in these attacks, it’s not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. Of course, that’s not the way we’re programmed to think. We respond to stories, not analysis. I don’t mean to be unsympathetic; this tendency is human and these deaths are really tragic. But 18 armed people intent on killing lots of innocents will be able to do just that, and last-line-of-defense countermeasures won’t be able to stop them. Intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. We have to find and stop the terrorists before they attack, and deal with the aftermath of the attacks we don’t stop. There really is no other way, and I hope that we don’t let the tragedy lead us into unwise decisions about how to deal with terrorism.

Massie adds: "I’m afraid that’s true. The initial threat may come from terrorism; the second danger comes from our response to terror." And this is insight is not a function of left or right; it’s a function of the necessary perspective to frame the maximal response, which may not mean military force.

This is a typically concise and brilliant summation of the problem from Richard Posner. And this paragraph helps lay out the depth of the challenge for conservatives right now:

The financial crisis has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus, because the crisis is largely a consequence of innate weaknesses in free markets and of excessive deregulation of banking and finance, rather than of government interference in the market. Believers in a strong foreign policy have been hurt by the protracted and seemingly purposeless war in Iraq (the main effects of which seem to have been discord between the United States and its allies, increased recruitment of Islamic terrorists, and the strengthening of Iran and of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of al Qaeda in Pakistan) and the Bush Administration’s lack of success in dealing with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. And social conservatives have been hurt by the stridency of some of their most prominent advocates, who all too often give the appearance of being mean-spirited, out-of-touch, know-nothing deniers of science (e.g., evolution, climate change).

The combination of all three is a very potent one. The crisis is at two levels – the dreadful incompetence and incoherence of the Bush-Cheney administration, which has poisoned the Republican brand for more than one generation, and the emergence of inherent flaws in several strains of conservative thought.

The banking crisis is so close to us and so unresolved it’s hard to see it in context, but I fear that Greenspan is right: it’s a huge flaw that cannot be explained away by government. The limits of hard power are, in fact, perfectly in line with conservatism’s deeper insights into human affairs, with Bush and Cheney acting more as over-reaching utopians than conservative statesmen. And the social conservatism problem has been a function of Christianism: an inability to shape society as it is because their theological doctrine demands adherence to eternal dogma not development of pragmatic policy. So we have their rigid refusal to countenance any legal abortion or any civil recognition of gay couples.

Grappling with any one of these problems would be serious enough. Untangling all three at once? The GOP had better hope Obama really screws up.

I might as well say, at the risk of sounding like a massive suck-up, that David is a great choice, to my mind. It’s great because he has shown a lingering resistance to the Higher Washington Blather that bloviates outward in portentous puffs of Broder and Halperin and Cokie. But only if he can do the show from time to time as Larry King.

Can you imagine this ever happening in the past eight years?

Jones, NATO’s commissar, initially sold Afghanistan to NATO allies as if it were Kosovo; he soon realized that mistake and spent much of his term fighting for a different strategy and for more resources. Obama seems to appreciate the fact that Jones was able to change his mind and take a new course when evidence rendered his earlier assumptions inoperative.

Marc titled that post "Epigenetic By Virtue Of Them." He can use that word as a White House blogger because he works for the Atlantic.

The three opposition parties look like they may form a coalition government and oust the conservatives. Frum thinks whoever wins is committing political suicide.

Seriously:

"No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office."

An Oliver Stone Production:

Ah. Levi.

A reader writes:

Two quick comments on that post about the Iraq interrogator:

1) Brainpower vs brutality – that’s the point of this piece in a nutshell, as I read it. And that is also the key to understanding the last eight years of American government under Bush and the "conservatives": brutality – against our enemies, against the Constitution, against the rule of law, against the opposing political party, against internal dissent with in their own party. And what we hope we see in the next eight years is brainpower.

2) Alexander writes "But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations — and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror." Although I understand his point, let’s be clear: there is no choice between torture and terror: torture is terror. Plain and simple. You either practice them both, or you don’t practice either one.

Why do Bush and the conservatives practice torture/terror/brutality? Because: the pot drips what’s in it. When the basis of your own worldview is fear, you create terror. The contrast between Bush and Barack, fear and confidence, brutality and brainpower, could not be more clear.