Month: September 2009

Kevin Sullivan weighs the options:

It's this thuggish regime the United States must negotiate with if it wishes to halt an Iranian nuclear weapons program and alter Iranian behavior throughout the Middle East. Whether or not sanctions impede or stymie Iranian revolution shouldn't be a calculation in present negotiations with Tehran. A nuclear-armed Iran—based off the North Korean case study, for one—would be far more difficult to press on human rights, fair elections and civil liberties. This is what Ken Pollack once referred to as Iran's dual ticking clocks—one clock ticks down to revolution, the other to a nuclear bomb. Waiting and cheering for the former to go off before the latter is not a luxury the U.S. presently has.

A reader writes:

I grew up in Boston and was raped by priests beginning at age 6. I just let you into a very small circle. When the predators who liked young children had no more use for me because I had aged they traded me to other priests. Unlike some I have remembered my abuse on a daily basis (forgetting would be such a blessing). While the Pope may find comfort in the fact "that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse," he should wonder and worry about the morality of the many who knew and said and did nothing. From my experience I would say that over 50% of the other priests knew and allowed the horror to continue. As an adult I have talked with some and their evasions and justifications are disgusting.

I chose not to sue the Catholic church because I did not think that punishing the people of the church, taking their hard-earned money, would help my mind or slay any of the demons. Plus I hoped that the church would have some kind of soul-searching, maybe public hearings, that would shine a light on that whole ugly chapter in its history. So far all we have is rationalizing and blame-shifting.

The Kaiser Foundation finds that support for health care reform is rebounding.

Packer worries that the tight message control of the Obama campaign is having a harmful effect on the Obama administration:

People in the Administration tell me […] Obama hates “process” stories because they end up focussing on trivial matters of personality. They also say that the White House wants to give the impression that everything flows from the top. This last is the one that troubles me most. Even if such a thing were possible, it isn’t healthy. I’d even say it’s undemocratic. Something as vast and complex as the U.S. government cannot be presented to the public along the same lines as a Presidential campaign. In the end—I saw this happen to the Bush Administration in Iraq—the result is that the White House doesn’t seal information in, but, instead, it seals itself off from information. The levers of government eventually stop working because no one in the bureaucracy wants to explain what’s going on for fear of the White House press office, which means the ability to think clearly grows sclerotic.

Austin Frakt, who has studied Medicare Advantage, supports the proposed cuts to the program:

[D]o higher MA payments produce little value to beneficiaries, as Obama claims, or are the benefits they fund important to maintain, as Republicans would have us believe? The balance of the evidence is on Obama’s side. In fact, it is a landslide: for each dollar spent, 14% of the value reaches beneficiaries and 86% of it goes elsewhere (profit or cost). Cuts to MA should be a no brainer.

(Hat tip: Ezra Klein)

TPM has some details on Lynn Vincent, author of Palin's upcoming book:

Vincent is also a credited author on "Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party," a take-down of the Democrats co-written by conservative author Robert Stacy McCain…

Today on the Dish we learned that Going Rogue: An American Story will hit stores way ahead of schedule. Andrew marveled at Palin's ability to churn out 400 pages in four months, a reader smelled a conspiracy, Politico predicted huge sales, and Santorum said this with a straight face. Andrew also took a long look at the other female star in the GOP, Liz Cheney.

In foreign policy, Mousavi came out against sanctions, Bacevich proposed a Cold War on Terror, Steve Coll told it straight on Afghanistan, Friedersdorf chided the GOP's double standard on spending, Drezner took on the Leveretts, Marc Lynch wrung his hands over Obama, and Larison was more optimistic.

Rounding out the Dish, the Vatican shifted blame over its sex scandals while Andrew addressed the latest controversy from Betsy McCaughey. We also found one of the creepiest ads in a while and one of the best MHBs in a while.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

We didn't invade the Soviet Union because it was physically impossible to do so, not because we were so self-confident. If you want evidence of how little self-confidence we had, take a look at how many brutal dictators we backed in the Western hemisphere on the theory that any little incursion of Communism would spread like a virus.  Look at our policy in Vietnam, entirely premised on the notion that Communism was some kind of unstoppable force that we could not allow to take hold. Better yet, look at how our fear of the Soviets turned inward on ourselves.  We reworded the pledge of allegiance of the US to include "under God" in a reaction to the godless Communists.  McCarthy launched massive witch hunts on the premise that somehow Soviets were infiltrating our country and turning our own against us.  None of that exactly wreaks of self-confidence.

And yet successive presidents and Congresses nonetheless avoided outright conflict and slowly allowed the Soviet Union to implode, while doing all they could to make its survival as costly as possible. That doesn't mean inaction. But it does mean steadiness and a certain level of restraint.

I'm not saying that Iran is an identical case. Its oil gives it a lifeline. But its elite is as stupid as the Soviets in running an economy; and it has fatally lost its own people. Containment is a strategy worth exploring, given the horrible nature of the alternatives.