Month: February 2010

Jim Henley joins the debate:

[It] doesn’t matter how awfully gleeful doves are or aren’t. It doesn’t matter how gleeful Larison and I were or weren’t about being right about the disaster the Iraq War became, or how happy the Leveretts are or aren’t to have the better case about the strength of the Green Revolution in Iran. It doesn’t matter exactly how much that intellectual pleasure is swamped by horror at the suffering of the victims. The premise of liberal society is that arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the state of the souls of the arguers. It is more important that the Iraq hawks were wrong then and the Iran hawks wrong now than how any of us feel about it. And it’s vastly more important that the hawks were and are wrong than how any of us in the policy argument feel about each other.

Larison follows up.The Leveretts respond:

We do not intend to come across as callous in our work.  We certainly do not take glee in anyone’s death, injury, or incarceration.  Every death is a tragedy, especially when the life lost is a young one.  But, in our view, our first responsibility as analysts is to be right.  We would ask people to judge our work by its clarity, rigor, and whether the bottom-line judgments and supporting analyses stand the test of time.

It is one thing for civil disobedience to occur to protest irrational government discrimination against gays in New York City. And a great thing. But at a Jesuit Catholic university in the middle of a college basketball game? Watch how each of these civil rights supporters are individually escorted off by the police. We need to do this more and more, everywhere and every place we can – especially in Catholic colleges which refuse to grant gay and lesbian and bi and  transgender students the dignity and respect they fully deserve as human beings made in the image of God. Their statement:

In light of the recent decision by the John Carroll University administration to not specifically include the protection of Lesbians, Gays, Bi-Sexuals, Transgendered, and Questioning students in its Anti-Discrimination Statement, we, the students, faculty, and alumni of John Carroll University choose to voice our support for those the university leaves without protection.

John Carroll’s mission is to create people for others. That means support, protection, love, and understanding for all people without regard to color, creed, sexual preference, gender, age, or other personal factors. That’s the goal of a Jesuit institution. 

By not explicitly voicing its support of LGBTQ students, faculty, and alumni, John Carroll’s administration is breaking those unspoken bonds of trust that make JCU a community.

It’s time for those who have called Carroll home in some capacity to speak up and demand of the President, Board of Directors, and Administration the words that promise safety and security to those whose rights are so tenuous and often unprotected.

In short, we expect better of John Carroll University. We demand better.

God bless them. As he blesses all who stand up against bigotry, intolerance and stigmatization. And they seem to be making some headway.

My friend Chuck Lane echoes the Beltway CW (as of today, anyway):

For months now, Bayh has been screaming at the top of his voice that the party needs to reorient toward a more popular, centrist agenda — one that emphasizes jobs and fiscal responsibility over health care and cap and trade.

Where to start? Well, first where I agree with Chuck. The selling of health insurance reform by the Democrats, and their allowing the nuttier parts of the right to define the issue, remains unforgivable. The Democrats, by and large, are the most pathetic bunch of panty-waists I have ever come across. They couldn't sell a Jager shot to an alcoholic. That they could not persuade a majority that ending the cruelties of the pre-existing conditions exclusions, and bringing some small measure of health security to 40 million struggling Americans and cutting the deficit at the same time wasn't centrist … well, there's a reason many of us find the whole lot of them a sad sack of shifting saps.

Obama should have done more – but it is not as if he didn't have a whole host of other things to deal with. among them … a financial crisis that could have created a Second Great Depression, a failing war in Afghanistan, a volatile and dangerous Iran, a still very, very fragile Iraq, Netanyahu's threat to launch a war on Iran, an automobile industry on the brink, a housing crisis, a massive debt he had nothing to do with, a totally obstructionist and increasingly fanatical GOP, Gitmo, the legacy of the past administration's war crimes, gays in the military … you get the picture.

But here's what I don't get:

Obama's stimulus did save jobs that would otherwise have been wiped out if the downward spiral had intensified; his unpopular rescuing of the banks did the same, however infuriating helping those bastards was; he restructured the car industry to save countless jobs; he certainly cannot be held responsible for the collapse of the recent jobs package. And as Chuck well knows, the brutal fact is that there is not much Obama can do to avoid the brutal and long hangover from the housing bubble and financial crisis more than he has. And if he had nationalized the banks and doubled the stimulus, the Beltway pundits would doubtless be decrying his lack of centrism on that as well.

And since when is Obama's health insurance reform bill not centrist? It will cut the deficit, according to the CBO. As Jon Rauch definitively explains here, it represents a very moderate compromise on core policy ideas of both sides. And on fiscal responsibility, surely Chuck agrees that cutting spending in the last year would have been nuts. And Obama has backed a bipartisan commission on long-term fiscal reform that the GOP has simply blocked. As to cap and trade, the question is simply one of whether the climate crisis needs to be tackled now rather than later. Perhaps, politically, it was too much too soon. but on this matter, short term political positioning must be weighed against actual science and actual threats to the environment that we do not have an endless amount of time to fix.

God knows what Wieseltier will say about me next for posting this, but as a piece of Purim Jewish humor I found it genius:

Well, Goldblog can explain here and here. I am going to respond to the substantive points of Jeffrey's seconding of Jon Chait's pseudo-defense of my not being a rancid anti-Semite soon. But I do want to say that my friendships are never based on politics or ideology and never have been. I take friendship very seriously as a virtue and wrote a book on it. I think of Jon and Jeffrey as friends, brilliant journalists, and sharp humorists and, as readers know, link to them constantly because they know much more about some subjects than I do. 

I also totally understand the excruciating position Jeffrey is in. He is a passionate believer in Israel and has to endure a huge amount of calumny, bile and pressure for writings things that many Israel supporters do not want to hear. In this I have long admired both his passion and his courage in a very, very hard place. I am in that place too. I have been in that place on gay issues on many occasions – especially during the 1990s. God knows my writings on my own Church have led to an incredibly arduous and painful experience for me personally. But I continue to write about them because, believe it or not, I still love my church as deeply as Jeffrey loves Israel. It's not easy, and the attraction of just stepping aside is real and constant.

On the Israel question, all I can say is that the number of ugly anti-Semitic emails I get are vastly outnumbered by constant, vicious attacks on me as an anti-Semite. Maybe Jeffrey isn't copied on those. And maybe these thuggish emails – like the ones that routinely accuse me of AIDS dementia – sometimes lead to real-time blogging that can be emotional. I make no apologies for this. I defy any human being subjected to this not to feel assaulted and occasionally to respond with anger. It's part of why blogging is different from writing.

But I do want to say – before I tear his argument to shreds -  that I understand what Jeffrey endures on a regular basis and admire his courage in tackling difficult subjects nonetheless. Because he loves Israel; and Israel is committing a slow suicide. It is tough to watch.

Dallas, Texas, 9.01 am

There are many legitimate criticisms of the Goldstone report into the Israeli assault on Gaza a little over a year ago. But there is also something deeply familiar about the ad hominem bullying tactics that are routinely hauled out in the latest smear of Richard Goldstone. The latest from Ron Radosh in Pajamas Media:

What led Goldstone, himself a Jew supposedly favorable to Zionism, to chair the commission and to put his name on the blatantly one-sided and propagandist report? To answer that, I want to reproduce a remarkable letter that has been going around the internet, written by a former friend of Goldstone who resides in Israel.

Ah, yes. "Something much darker" must lie there, mustn't it? Go read the piece and make your own mind up. But here are some sections of the email so deeply racist and bigoted PJM should surely apologize for publishing them. The email is addressed to Goldstone:

Are you not ashamed? As an Israeli Jew, and as an Old Edwardian, I am mystified by your behaviour. It is unbelievable that you have seen fit to cause us such great damage and damage extending into the future, but hereunder, I will prove to you why you have done this … Everybody who has had experience in dealing with our Arab Moslem enemies, as I have, will agree with me that their definition of the truth is the fabrication of a false truth [sic] to conform to what they want to believe…

Your report is based on Arab facts, Arab information and Arab truth.

Now try to imagine any reputable outlet running a piece that used terms like "Jewish facts, Jewish information and Jewish truth."

It would rightly be regarded as anti-Semitic. It would simply never run in a US publication. Goldstone is then smeared as a careerist whose opposition to apartheid was phony and who is now advancing his own career through some kind of tribal betrayal:

It is obvious that you are only using your report for the purpose of Hamas and all the Arab block and their supporters, to nominate you for Secretary General of the United Nations as this is the only worthwhile advancement for a man like you already in such a high position. With all their support, you will have an automatic majority to vote you in as the new Secretary General of the United Nations. I maintain that you are betraying the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

This kind of discourse, this kind of ad hominem, this kind of bald-faced racism – lumping the entire Arab Muslim world as one homogeneous bloc, and seeing the entire region as some Manichean war to the death between "Jews" and "Arabs" by an American who seems to regard himself as a party to that struggle … really. This is what now passes for constructive analysis? And Ron Radosh seems a perfectly decent man on most subjects with whom I have had many civil interactions. But he seems unhinged on the matter of the Middle East. And this leads to grotesque slanders of the "treasonous" motives of a man like Goldstone.

This kind of McCarthyism needs to end and PJM needs to take down that racist post and apologize.

Here is a fairly recent Newsweek article on the newly captured Taliban commander. The pro-torture right pounces:

Of course,the far left nuts are already worried about Mullah Baradar’s well-being.

The prohibition of torture in war is not a function of either the far left or any sympathy with the Taliban or the Nazis or anyone else the West has captured. It is a core American value and has been since George Washington himself insisted upon it. My worry is not about McChrystal, who fully understands how torturing Baradar would destroy his entire strategy or about Obama. It’s about the Pakistanis. Powerline’s response is also predictable:

That’s great, and we sincerely congratulate the administration on this accomplishment. We can’t help noting, though: why didn’t they pay for a lawyer and read Baradar his rights? If negotiating with a criminal defense lawyer is the most effective way to get information from a captured terrorist–here, among other things, the authorities are trying to learn the whereabouts of the Taliban’s long-lost leader, Mullah Omar–why didn’t they follow that paradigm with Mr. Baradar?

Insta takes the same tone. Michael Cohen:

Not only is this enormous as far as the US war in Afghanistan, but it suggests for perhaps the first time that the Pakistan government is willing to cooperate with the US in going after the Afghan Taliban.  One can only imagine the impact on Taliban feelings of security and reliance on Pakistani support: that safe haven ain’t feeling so safe anymore.

One has to think this will affect the drive toward political reconciliation in a dramatic way – because if you’re the Taliban this news suggests that time is no longer necessarily on your side.

Gregg Carlstrom:

This could be true — if Baradar’s arrest heralds a serious anti-Taliban push from the Pakistani military and intelligence services. That’s a big “if.” Pakistani leaders, particularly Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, have said some encouraging things in recent weeks. The ISI has a history of playing all sides, though; it’s quite possible Pakistan’s security apparatus saw a strategic benefit in capturing Baradar (fears about a mounting Taliban presence in Karachi, perhaps, or maybe the ISI is getting something in return) but doesn’t plan to make a habit of these arrests.

Bill Roggio:

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency has long been accused of aiding/sheltering the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani government and military have long denied that the Taliban’s top leadership (called the Quetta Shura for the Paksitani city where it was based) is operating in Pakistan. And the government denied rumors the Quetta Shura relocated to Karachi. Then, lo and behold, Baradar is arrested in Karachi. Why was Baradar arrested now? Is this a signal that the Paksitani military is dropping its support for the Quetta Shura? If not, why haven’t the rest of the senior Taliban leaders been rounded up?

Joshua Foust:

Baradar wrote the Conduct Guidebook, which was meant to moderate some fo the Taliban’s more nastier excesses. Much like the assassination of Nek Mohammed is what gave us five years of Baitullah Mehsud, there is a chance that Baradar’s successor will be much worse. There is also the chance he’ll be weaker and less formidable.

Juan Cole:

My own suspicion is that Mullah Baradar was behind the violence against Shiites in Karachi this winter. Provoking Sunni-Shiite violence so as to destabilize Pakistan’s financial and industrial hub would be a typical al-Qaeda tactic. The bombings succeeded in provoking major riots and property damage. But when you hurt stock prices and harm government revenues, you rather draw the attention to yourself of the country’s elite and their security forces, since you have mightily inconvenienced them. As long as the Old Taliban were mainly bothering the government of Hamid Karzai over the border in Pakistan, the ISI might have been able to turn a blind eye to them. But if they were going to cause billions of dollars of damage to Karachi, which they did this winter, that is intolerable.

I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Mullah Baradar’s capture will destroy the Old Taliban. And even if that organization is weakened, there are at least three other major insurgent groups only loosely connected to them, which have the operational autonomy and resources to go on fighting.

(Photo: A Pakistani man reads an Urdu-language evening newspaper reporting the capture of a top Taliban commander at a news stand in Karachi on February 16, 2010. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik branded as ‘propaganda’ reports that top Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had been arrested in a joint Pakistani-US spy operation. By Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty.)

From Rod Norland:

“[Mullah Baradar] is safe and free, and he leads the command and he is in Afghanistan,” Mr. Mujahid claimed. “This is a false rumor spread by foreigners in order to weaken the morale of the Taliban because they are facing big problems in Marja.”