Month: September 2009

First They Came For The Flavored Cigarettes…

Steve Chapman asks for evidence of the connection between flavored cigarettes and teen smoking:

Only a few small companies still offer the sort of flavors targeted by the government. According to one maker, Kretek International, these cigarettes account for less than two-tenths of 1 percent of all U.S. sales.

When I asked an FDA spokesperson what portion of the cigarettes smoked by teens are flavored, she told me the agency doesn't know. So how does it know they serve as "a gateway for many children"? How does it know that banning them will have any effect on the number of new tobacco addicts? Actually, it doesn't.

In any case, the number of kids using these products can't be very large. Michael Siegel, a physician and public health professor at Boston University, says that 87 percent of all high school smokers choose Marlboro, Camel, or Newport, which don't come in tutti-frutti flavors.

Russia And Iran: No Movement?

Larison counters:

The Kremlin said that the Russian government wants the IAEA to investigate and that it will assist the investigation. This is not quite diplomatic boilerplate, but it is close. This is not, as Andrew says, a “breakthrough,” but a minimal statement expressing concern about reported violations of Security Council resolutions. At most the Russian government is saying that it has not officially decided how it will respond until the IAEA investigates. Russia has committed to nothing new, and it has not altered its stance on Iran sanctions, and there is little reason to think that this will change.

One of the things that worries me about trying to acquire Russian support for sanctions on Iran is that sanctioning Iran is already a counterproductive, foolish policy. It does not become a wiser policy when it has Russian backing. Significant Russian cooperation with a sanctions regime would make it more “successful” in that it would isolate Iran more fully, which would at least address part of the practical problem of imposing sanctions on Iran, but this would not lead to the result that sanctions advocates want. Most likely, China would pick up the slack and become even more heavily invested in trade with Iran than it has been. On the contrary, as opponents of sanctions keep saying, a tighter sanctions regime will harm internal political opposition to the regime, increase the political-military establishment’s hold on the economy and cause Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of outside hostility.

I take Daniel's points. But there was a question mark in my first post and I have continually expressed skepticism that Russia will come through in the end. As to his deeper point, I'm not fully persuaded that real sanctions, if actively backed by Russia or passively allowed by China, would be as counter-productive as Daniel implies. At the very least, I think exploring this option as thoroughly as possible is a good idea regardless. The worst that can happen is that Obama will have shown to the world the West's willingness to reach a peaceful solution – and the responsibility of Ahmadinejad if such a solution is impossible.

This is a tough call – as tough as Afghanistan. I lean toward doing all we can to avoid a military conflict in Iran and getting out of Afghanistan as responsibly as possible. But I'm open to alternative arguments in two excruciating dilemmas. I learned my lesson on Iraq – not to get locked onto a position without considering every possible angle. And one such angle is containing a nuclear-armed Iran rather than taking the huge risks of attempting to stop it through force.

Ends Before Means

Conor Friedersdorf hammers home a truth:

On reading Mr. Beck’s defenders, I can’t help but think that their judgment and integrity are being corroded by politics. The ideological battle between conservatives and liberals has become for them the most important struggle in American life — in order to win it, they are willing to defend and count as allies anyone in their insular world who advances the appropriate side in what they regard as a two-sided battle for the country’s soul. The most honest among them are explicit in arguing that their ends justify whatever rhetorical means it takes to achieve them. Even worse, they are using this total political warfare as a litmus test — temperament and political philosophy are insufficient to be a conservative in their minds, because they’ve redefined the term such that it demands loyalty to a political coalition and even the particular tactics it employs.

Not Just China And Russia

Juan Cole notes that Iraq could also disrupt sanctions against Iran:

American and Western discussions of what to do about Iran almost completely ignore Iraq. But no economic sanctions can effectively be placed on Iran without Iraqi support. A gasoline embargo would fail completely if Iraqis smuggled gasoline to Iran (which they certainly would, both for economic and religious reasons). Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, said Saturday that new sanctions on Iran "would not work" and that Iraq would never allow its airspace to be used for an aggressive attack on Iran "by any country" (he's looking at you, Israel and US). Somehow I don't think this is what Bush was going for when he invaded Iraq.

Baucus’s Millions

Andrew Samwick has an idea that would give George Will a conniption:

Why should it be legal to make a political contribution to a candidate who is not running for an office that represents you as a constituent?  I do not think it should be.  Imagine how different this senator's incentives would be if he could only raise money from the residents of Montana as individuals and not from organized interests.

A Safire In The Rough

Morton Janklow remembers his lifelong friend, William Safire:

Bill brought a surprising contrarian perspective, grounded in conservatism in the true sense of that word. A civil rights advocate, a staunch defender of the right of privacy and human rights around the world, and an outspoken critic of governmental efforts to infringe upon those rights, Bill was, at the same time, cautious about political and social change and hawkish in his attitude about America’s role, including its military role, in the post-World War II era.

Here's JPod's summary:

He was a patriot, an American nationalist, a Zionist, a civil libertarian, and a classic Washington type of a sort that has now almost entirely passed from the scene.

I loved reading him on the nanny state, the First Amendment, the pretensions of left-liberalism, and his love of actual life in all its humdrum variety. I confess to finding his writing style sometimes unbearably cute, but there was great mischief in his provocations, and his back-and-forth with readers on language was, in some ways, a fore-runner of the blogosphere. He lacked pretension as a journalist when New York Times hauteur  was at its peak.

But when the subject turned to Israel, the tone shifted dramatically.

It wasn't his Zionism or defense of successive Israeli governments, or his right-of-the-Likud stance that troubled me. It was the assumption of the most extreme views of Jewish and Israeli vulnerability as if they were inarguably the only positions a non-anti-Semite could take. Maybe that's why the New York Times obit made no mention at all of his life-long defense of Israel. Were they embarrassed by it? Or did it seem routine?

With this passionate exception, Charles Murray's tribute to Safire (and Buckley and Kristol) is on point, even as I think he overlooks Kristol's latter day cynicism and movementitis:

The comparisons with the voices of the Right today are unavoidable (The Left’s no better, but they’re not for me to worry about). There are many exceptions in print and some on radio and television. But who got on the cover of Time magazine the same week as Irving died? Glenn Beck, sticking his tongue out. He and others like him comprise far too much of the public face of the Right today—crudely sarcastic when they are not being angry, mean-spirited, and often embarrassingly ignorant. The antithesis of Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol.

I expect to be told that I’m too squeamish. We’re in a battle for America’s soul at a pivotal moment. But the very truth of that statement—we are indeed in a battle for America’s soul—makes it a good idea to stop and think about when the American Right was truly influential. It didn’t start after right-wing talk shows got big. It started in the 1960s, as Friedman, Buckley, and Kristol were hitting their stride. It flowered in the 1970s, then reached its apogee in the 1980s when their ideas were given political force by Ronald Reagan—another man of civility, good humor, and optimism. Don’t tell me that we have to put up with the Glenn Becks of the world to be successful.