Month: March 2010

This was how Chris Wallace addressed Bill Kristol on the matter of Iraq on Fox News Sunday this past weekend. No, I'm not kidding. So let's review Mr Kristol's expertise on Iraq these past few years, shall we?

September 19, 2002: Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons.

February 20, 2003: "He's got weapons of mass destruction."

February 2003 (from his book, "The War Over Iraq"):

"The United States may need to occupy Iraq for some time. Though U.N., European and Arab forces will, as in Afghanistan, contribute troops, the principal responsibility will doubtless fall to the country that liberates Baghdad. According to one estimate, initially as many as 75,000 troops may be required to police the war's aftermath, at a cost of $16 billion a year. As other countries' forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that force could probably be drawn down to several thousand soldiers after a year or two."

(Reality check: The war has cost over a trillion dollars and 120,000 US troops remain there seven years later.)

February 24, 2003: "In retrospect, [the Bush administration] probably shouldn't have gone down the inspections route … Doing so merely handed the Europeans and the U.N. — neither of them known for their dissatisfaction with Saddam's rule — a say in the process. The idea, of course, was to mollify them (as well as Colin Powell) and in the process hope that inspectors would stumble across a casus belli. But neither aim has been accomplished.

February 24, 2003: "Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower."

March 1, 2003: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."

March 5, 2003: "We'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction."

April 1 2003: "On this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there’s been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular."

Look: we all make mistakes. I did. But unlike Kristol I have tried to account for them. And unlike Kristol, no one on Fox News or anywhere else would call me an "expert" on Iraq. If you want a glimpse into the utter corruption of the Beltway punditariat in which no one is ever accountable for anything they ave ever said, in which individuals who have gotten things so wrong in the past that hundreds of thousands of innocents are now dead continue their lucrative careers, in which no one in the media elite is ever fired for being wrong, only for losing ratings … then the career of Bill Kristol is Exhibit A. Remember that after this record on Iraq, he was rewarded with a column in the New York Times and now has a column on Fred Hiatt's op-ed page in the Washington Post.

The only thing Kristol is expert in is Rovian politics, shamelessness and propaganda.

Ackerman spells it out.

Joe Hagan profiles the Cheneys:

Fox is a regular pulpit, of course, but Liz is also all over NBC, where she happens to be social friends with Meet the Press host David Gregory (whose wife worked with Liz ’s husband at the law firm Latham & Watkins), family friends with Justice Department reporter Pete Williams (Dick Cheney’s press aide when he was secretary of Defense), and neighborhood friends with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of Carter-administration national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. When Mika criticized Dick Cheney on her show last year, the former vice-president sent her a box of chocolate cupcakes.

Lawrence O’Donnell, an MSNBC pundit who engaged in a particularly testy shouting match on Good Morning America with Liz Cheney over waterboarding, says the networks have allowed her a high degree of control over her appearances. “She had up to that point been completely accustomed to having interviews go her way and ceded on her terms,” he observes. “She has been careful to make sure that the interviews worked that way.”

Mercifully, time has passed since Leon Wieseltier's latest eruption against yours truly. But I promised a response to my friend Jeffrey Goldberg's response so here goes. I'll address his posts as he numbers them.

1. On his seconding of Chait, see here.

2. I guess I'm grateful he thinks I pass the Anne Frank attic test (no really, you shouldn't have). I'd also like to say in response that I do not regard Jeffrey as a homophobe, a racist, an Islamophobe, a bigot or a neocon. I regard him as a passionate, honest writer, whose passions sometimes get the better of him. Goys and lesbians have nothing to fear from this honorary bear.

3. I get so frustrated with his casual conflation of support or opposition to the policies of any Israeli government and being or not being a friend of "the Jews," whatever that phrase is supposed to mean. They are separate questions in so far as the second one is intelligible at all outside of some paranoid, identity-soaked mindset. They may not be separate questions for some Jewish-Americans of the old school and older generations, but they are for the younger generation and they sure are for non-Jews. And we all get to have an equal say here, right? We're all against disenfranchising anyone in this debate, right?

So it seems to me I can fervently oppose the continued and accelerating annexation of the West Bank while having nothing whatsoever against any Jewish-American or Jewish-anyone, let alone having some issue with something called "the Jews". (I can't win here, of course, because if I say I'm ridiculously into Jewish-American culture, humor, scholarship, etc, my philo-Semitism would be proof of my anti-Semitism. It's heads you win, tails I lose here. But look, you don't edit The New Republic for five years if you're an anti-Semite, ok? I may be a masochist but that's ridiculous.)

I regard the establishment of the Jewish state as one of the West's high-points in the 20th Century. Like America's founding, it was not immaculate, and its survival has been a brutal struggle in which Israel has not been as innocent as some want to believe, but whose enemies' anti-Semitism and hatred is tangible and omnipresent and despicable. But the Palestinians' legitimate grievances are very real and utterly human and perfectly understandable. Israel, for its part, remains, in its own proper borders, a model state for that part of the world; its openness and democracy vastly exceed any neighboring regime's; it has made more of a tiny strip of land than most of its neighbors have of their vastly greater territory and resources put together. If I were Jewish, I'd be proud. But I'm not, and I can still admire a great deal. There is a huge amount to admire.

But the turn in the last few years disturbs me; and the Gaza war horrified me, as Gitmo horrified me. It doesn't mean I regard Israel or America as the equivalent of Hamas or al Qaeda. It means I hold Western values with a white-knuckled grip – because I fear what happens when we abandon them, and lose our way in a guerrilla war with no end and no limits. I think Israel has lost its way in this moral maze at times and so has America. And I believe that in this necessary war on Jihadist terrorism, our core values matter. I want to win this war, for the sake of freedom, individual dignity, and peace. I do not want to win by becoming some ghastly echo of what we are fighting against, or in such a way that the difference between barbarism and civilization becomes the way in which we torture and abuse human beings, not that we are torturing or abusing them in the first place. Does that make me a vitriolic America-basher?

So my anger at the attitude of the Netanyahu government does not make me a vitriolic "Israel-basher" either. I've already tried to explain my evolution over the past decade in my response to Chait, but let me merely reiterate: I find the rightist radicalization of Israeli politics over the last few years, the ugly triumphalism and rhetoric in the Gaza war, the doubling of settlers on the West Bank, and the contempt for the current US president in Jerusalem to be acts of disrespect to the American people, and deeply unhelpful to the dangerous religious war we are still engulfed in. I understand they must be seen in the context of Hamas' ideological evil and Iran's threat. But they must also be seen in the context of a post-Arafat PA that deserves more respect than it's been getting. And this context as well: Israel has one of the strongest armies in the world, one of the most effective intelligence services and 150 nuclear weapons, while none of its neighbors has any at all. I mean, for Pete's sake, get a grip. If you remain utterly terrified with that kind of arsenal, you have a psychological, not a security, problem.

And no, I do not share Goldberg's deep identity with the Jewish state (although I certainly respect it) and have no difficulty in seeing a difference between Israel's interests and America's interests or the West's interests in general. That means I am perfectly open to the idea that the US should at times sanction Israel or use pressure against it in the advance of American interests in the wider war on terror. I don't think it's vitriolic Israel-bashing to put aid on the table, or loan guarantees, or a military intervention to create a Palestinian state.

4. Then there's the notion that

[Sullivan] sometimes uses his blog to disseminate calumnies that can cause hatred of Jews, and of Israel. I know this from personal experience, because the anti-Semites who e-mail him copy me. Andrew's posts on Israel and on Jewish political power in America have lately given comfort to some very repulsive people. This doesn't mean, of course, that the role of AIPAC shouldn't be debated openly, but it should be done without prejudice; without the axiomatic assumption that American Jews who love Israel are disloyal to America; and without the Judeocentrism of the neo-Lindbergh set.

This is guilt by association. I am not responsible for the emails I get or the ones copied to Goldberg. I am responsible for my own words and arguments and if Goldberg wants to take issue, he is welcome to and I will respond.

5. My "hatreds". I admit to some. I hate the oppression of the Iranian people and the brutal treatment of Gazans by the Egyptians and the Israelis. I hate anti-Semitism. But this leads to passionate support as well: of the Green Movement in Iran (do I really have to prove that?), of Obama's potential, of Israel's good faith efforts for peace in the past. And I think using the term hatred is a deliberate way to delegitimize my passions. Have I had a beef with Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, John Yoo or Hillary Clinton? You betcha. Do I throw some strong language around on this blog in the heat of the moment? Absolutely. Do I back it all up with argument, facts, documents, analysis? Yes I do. Do I publish dissent and pushback? A lot more than Goldberg does. Now for some real hatred, read Goldblog on Stephen Walt or Matt Yglesias.

6. The argument from authority:

Andrew Sullivan doesn't know that much about the Middle East. I know that sounds odd, given that he is a former editor of The New Republic, but there you have it.

I parodied this recently in a joke Jeffrey didn't get. All I can say is: this is not an argument, it's an insult. And Jeffrey's deeper knowledge always ends up in the same place. He is the classic anti-anti-Israel writer.

He admirably avoids the irresponsibility of simply waging rhetorical and logical warfare in defense of Israel at all times as some neoconservatives of the older generation do, but he cannot bring himself to offer stringent arguments against the current course of Israel's assisted suicide that might actually make a difference. He will only ever go so far, and no further. His knowledge may be much deeper than mine but that is partly because it is indeed rooted in such a strong identity that the argument is sometimes clouded and circumscribed by deep, deep feeling. I respect this feeling, but it is not the same as reason. And it can distort all the knowledge in the world.

So of course, the settlements are wrong, awful, counter-productive in Jeffrey's view… but if push ever comes to shove, no real pressure must ever be put on Israel to stop them growing, let alone remove them by force, which is the only way they'll be abolished. Even a request to freeze them is an "attack" by vitriolic Israel-bashers. In the end, Netanyahu will always get the benefit of the doubt and forceful critics of him and of his allies in Washington must always endure the smear of being self-hating Jews or closet anti-Semites.

But maybe it's time Netanyahu didn't get the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the world is too dangerous right now to stand by as a Fourth World War gets going in the Middle East between the tribalism of Avigdor Lieberman and the bigotry of Ahmadinejad. Maybe we have to take a stand as Western public thinkers and stop hiding behind world-weariness and authority and and anti-anti-positioning and tell the truth as we see it without this constant fraught question of bigotry being raised, let alone wielded as a rhetorical club.

Let us debate what America's interests are right now. And let us debate them robustly, passionately, sometimes intemperately and in good faith. You know: like Israelis do.

(Photos: a child killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza; a Jewish settler on the West Bank; Avigdor Lieberman, foreign minister of Israel; a child terrorized by Hamas rockets in Sderot; the legs of a young girl killed by Israeli weaponry in a morgue in Gaza. By Abid Kateb, David Silverman and Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.)

Pondicherry, India, 5 pm

Juan Cole analyzes the Iraqi elections:

If the Iraqi National List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi did well enough to come to power, that would reorient Iraq radically, taking it back in some ways to 2002.

Uh-oh. He goes on:

Allawi's coalition is largely made up of Arab nationalists who would see Iran as a threat and would ally with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Baghdad would go back to helping contain Iran. Sunni Arab radicalism would likely be tamped down. For Washington, it would be the best of all possible worlds– a pro-American Iraqi government headed by a former CIA asset that is willing to help pressure Iran for the West. Internally, an Allawi government that depends heavily on Sunni Arab constituencies would find it difficult to compromise with the Kurds on the disputed province of Kirkuk or on Kurdistan's interests in Ninevah and Diyala, setting the stage for a potential civil war.

If, on the other hand, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki manages to hold on to power, Iraq will remain firmly in Shiite hands, and will likely have warm relations with Tehran.

Thoreau reacts to Adam Gadahn's possible arrest:

Try him for treason.  As I understand it, the US is accusing him of treason, there is a law on the books against treason, and we happen to have an entire branch of government that devotes itself to holding trials for people accused of violating federal law.  Even better, they have an entire set of rules already written down for how to do this.  We’re totally set for this.

There is considerable polling evidence that passage of health insurance reform will do two things: it will create a critical impression of the country moving forward in tackling its problems and will reassure and revive Democratic voters. Mark Blumenthal notes a fascinating aspect of a poll from NB/WSJ above. It showed reform to be unpopular in the abstract but much more popular if it became law:

"If the current health care legislation becomes law, will you consider it to be a step forward or a step backward?" Asked this way, the margin closed: 44 percent said it was a step forward and 49 percent said it was a step backward, leaving just 7 percent unable to answer.

Notice particularly the Independent number. My view is that if Obama and the Democrats campaign this fall on having ended the pre-existing conditions cruelties of insurance companies, on having provided a chance of insurance to the working poor (remember Hispanics favor reform by 86 percent), and ride a wave of modest economic recovery as well, the political narrative changes considerably.

Obama, like Reagan, will be perceived as having the grit to deliver against almighty odds. And if he continues to succeed in capturing and killing as many al Qaeda and Taliban thugs as he already has, and if he can bring some troops home from Iraq … well, I think he has a much better campaign theme than the do-nothing-but-brandish-your-guns-at-Starbucks right.

There is also more and more evidence, as I point out in my column this week, that support for reform has been remarkably solid since November:

I exclude Rasmussen, as usual, but even if you include Rasmussen, you get this:

This bill is highly sellable, especially when you campaign on its separate, specific, most popular parts. I hear a sound in the distance, if the Democrats can avoid losing their shit.

Meep, meep.

A reader writes:

There's one remaining major redesign layout issue that's driving me batty. When I click the "continue reading" link on a post, the text on the page I'm taken to is in a slightly larger font and, more importantly, the line spacing is increased. I find this incredibly visually jarring. If I can read it on the main blog page, why is it presented in a larger size on the stand-alone page? The spacing issue is completely baffling to me. Why is there so much blank space between the lines? Am I expected to talk out my red pen and edit the post onscreen? This appears to be true on all of the Atlantic blogs, not just yours.

It's driving me batty too.

It also makes it really hard to remember where you stopped reading, and find your place again, and provides a huge disincentive to click on the rest of any post.

Mercifully, the designers and editors of the Atlantic.com tell me they're trying to find a fix. They have been enormously responsive in undoing some of the obvious errors of the past week. Please give them a little more time to fix the rest. They had a hell of a week last week and have been working under intense pressure for a long time. They're good people doing their best. My personal thanks to Bob, Betsy and everyone who reacted to the problems so swiftly and reversed the biggest blunders almost immediately. They had just finished a marathon and had to start a sprint. But we'll fix this stuff. And bring the Dish back soon.

Because I won't stop giving them hell until they do.

What is there to say about the rash of stories about desperate or conflicted or tormented gay men that came out in the press while I was on vacation? I think there is this to say: the fact of the matter is that a small percentage of humankind is attracted emotionally and sexually to the same gender in exactly the same way that the overwhelming majority is attracted emotionally and sexually to the opposite gender. We do not know exactly why this is; but we do know that it is. It is the truth. It is reality. The notion that it can be somehow expunged from reality is a delusion. This much we now know. The question is simply what we will do about it.

This latter question is worthy of debate. I made my case for maximal freedom, minimal government and formal equality in all relevant political and civil matters here. But what seems to me unworthy of debate is that gay people somehow do not exist and are not fully human the way heterosexuals are human.

The sheer reality is that they have hearts and souls; and they have families and belong to families; their loves and lives are well-known to all heterosexuals because being human is already known to all heterosexuals. And yet homosexuals have historically been told – and are still being told in much of the world – that they are not fully human, that their love is somehow sick, and that while they come from families, they can never form their own. At an emotional and spiritual and psychological level, the sheer crippling pain this denial of gay humanity has caused to so many for so long is incalculable. If there is anything un-Christian, the imposition of this cruelty and the perpetuation of this pain is un-Christian – and the damage still continues its path of destruction in families, societies, institutions and human psyches.

The reason I can't quite find it in me to attack gay hypocrites or closeted men or prostitution-seeking priests is because I can't quite attack an already destroyed and devastated psyche and soul.

Something restrains me – an impulse against cruelty perhaps, or a sense that that could have been me, if I had not somehow found the strength to be myself or been unable to accept the humiliation of the closet. And what further injury could gay activists bring, after all, to Larry Craig than the injury of simply being Larry Craig? Or Ted Haggard? Or Charlie Crist?

And when we find a young famous person driven to suicide because of this, we should remember all those not so famous, who kill themselves for this reason, alone, all the time, or those who, in far greater numbers, simply die a little every day inside themselves. Because they have built a wall around themselves outside the livable ways of being human.

Because, for so long, their own governments and their own families have told them that they do not, and never will, belong.

Because they could not find a way to believe that God loves them as they are and that God is not the same as the current leaders of organized, fundamentalist religion.

(Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty.)