Author: Andrew Sullivan

The battle to reform the BBC is now in full swing. Could it be another Raines-like casualty of the Iraq war? Here are Blair’s “no-surrender” comments:

‘It is untrue. That statement is untrue,’ Blair said of the claim that the original weapons dossier published last September had been deliberately interfered with against the wishes of the intelligence services. ‘The idea that I or anyone else in my position would start altering intelligence evidence or saying to the intelligence services “I am going to insert this” is absurd. ‘There couldn’t be a more serious charge, that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified. ‘You could not make a more serious charge against a Prime Minister. The charge happens to be wrong. I think everyone now accepts that that charge is wrong.’

But you’re dealing with left-wing ideologues, Tony. This isn’t about the truth. It’s about discrediting a war that discredited them. Meanwhile, the Beeb responds: “The BBC did not have an agenda in its war coverage, nor does it now have any agenda which questions the integrity of the Prime Minister.” Try not to laugh too hard.

COULTERKAMPF: My take, having read (or tried to read) Ann Coulter’s appallingly bad new book. For good measure, my fisking of John Derbyshire’s recent anti-gay rant. A nice and dyspeptic start to the new week.

The unassuming, now-celibate gay Anglican bishop has withdrawn his acceptance of his position, avoiding a looming schism in the Church of England. It’s hard to know how to interpret this. Both the Anglicans and the Catholics,in the next few years, will have to deal with how many Western Christians feel about the dignity of gay people, while seeing their ranks boom among intermittently polygamous but rampantly homophobic Africans. It’s an irresolvable conflict. My prediction: eventual Anglican schism.

NEW IRANIAN CURRENCY? An intriguing possibility.

I’m in the hammock. See you Monday.

No, I don’t think it’s merely rhetoric. One of the many layers of the arguments for invading Iraq focused on the difficulties of waging a serious war on terror from a distant remove. Being based in Iraq helpsus notonly because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs’. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn’t always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.

THE BBC AND IRAQ: A new and comprehensive summary of fantastic media bias.

CONCEDING DEFEAT: “You’re absolutely right; many in the press have all but conceded defeat. Having spent a year (1967-68) in the Mekong Delta, and having made three other deployments to the Tonkin Gulf in the 1960’s, I am appalled by suggestions that there are parallels between the two conflicts. Just for perspective: We were in Vietnam for over a decade; we have been in Iraq for less than four months. There was no clear national interest at stake in Vietnam; in Iraq we either make this thing work — and create a chance for a peaceful and stable Middle East — or we will have failed catastrophically. It seems that few remember that at the peak of the fighting in Vietnam, and for a sustained period of time, we were losing about 500 killed — not killed and wounded, 500 killed — per week. In Iraq we have lost 22 dead to hostile fire in the two months since “major combat” was declared over. And yet the hand-wringing has bedome quite frantic.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

A devastating little piece by Brendan Nyhan. Part of me likes Coulter’s iconoclasm, panache, smarts. But you still have to draw the line somewhere; and, in my view, she damages conservatism as much as Michael Moore damages liberalism. It’s one thing in spirited debates to lose civility at times; it’s another thing to make a lack of civility your fundamental modus operandi.

And other new terms. A glossary on all things bloggy.

The British Conservative Party will allow its deputies a free vote on gay marriage in Britain. One Tory MP writes the following today in an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph:

A carefully drafted civil registration scheme could command support from people of all political affiliations and of none. By instinct, Tories are, rightly, wary of change – especially change based on abstract egalitarian theorising. But we accept changes that remove justified grievances, that tackle particular problems affecting people in their daily lives. So I appeal to my fellow Conservatives, inside and outside Parliament, to see the case for civil partnership. Changing the law, in this case, is not about political correctness. It is about personal decency. A law that effectively pretends gay couples don’t exist is indefensible. As we do at our best, let us accept the need for change and concentrate on the detail of a Bill to improve the lot of a sizeable minority of our fellow citizens.

That strikes me as a genuinely conservative statement. The Brits, with their usual pragmatism, will avoid the stark moral arguments of Americans – pro and con – and go about fixing an obvious legal anomaly. It seems inevitable that Britain will have gay marriage in effect by the fall. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart makes the same pragmatic step. Are we reaching a “tipping point”?

The inevitable outbreaks of violence and dissension in Iraq are obviously worth covering and important news. But there’s an under-current of complete gloom in news reports that seems to me to be more fueled by ideological fervor than sober analysis. Given the magnitude and complexity of the task of rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, it seems to me we’re making slow but decent progress. The lack of a complete social implosion or exploding civil war is itself a huge achievement. And no one said the post-war reconstruction was going to be easy. So what’s behind this drumbeat of apocalypse? I think it’s a good rule among boomer journalists that every story they ever edit or write or film about warfare will at some point be squeezed into a Vietnam prism. The modern military has denied these people the chance to be vindicated during actual combat; so they will try and present the occupation in exactly the same light. Yes, there is probably considerable discontent in Iraq right now; yes, every death is awful; but no, this isn’t even close to being combat; let alone Vietnam. Of course, I won’t be completely certain about this until Johnny Apple writes a front-page NYT news analysis piece laying out the new consensus. Tick, tock. Or is he too busy touring Devon?

Jeffrey Rosen provides the most effective critique so far. I’m mulling a response.

THE GATHERING STORM: The Mullahs shut down Tehran’s universities for the week around July 9. More signs of how worried they are. We also know how viciously they have tried to stop the student revolution in recent weeks:

The government itself now admits to having arrested 4,000 demonstrators, of whom some 800 were students. The student movement says the numbers were even higher, and the actual number could well be upwards of 6-7,000. Many were killed.

Michael Ledeen, as usual, has the goods. (Via Jeff Jarvis.)

An interesting report that suggests the Americans could learn a little from the more laid-back British approach to colonial transitions. (But, hey, the Brits have a little more experience in these matters, don’t they?) I was impressed by the following story. In a firefight, two innocent Iraqis were killed by British soldiers. The Brits were worried about tribal retribution:

So the next day two British officers, two Iraqi lawyers and a translator go to the hospital and ask how the locals deal with this sort of thing. The concept of “Fasil” or blood money is explained to them. A couple of days later, the word spreads that the British have paid 15 million Iraqi dinars in blood money to the families of the two Iraqi men. Further bloodshed was stopped. Perfect.
I am not discussing the moral correctness of blood money. This is the way things are done here and if this money will stop any sort of revenge killings then it is worth it. No, I only have one comment: being foreigners, they paid too much. Habibi, everything is bargainable here, and paying 15 million in blood money will ruin the blood money market – it is way too much. You should improve your tribal connections and get someone to bargain for you.

I cracked a smile at that one. But what a perfect example of British pragmatism.

LILEKS ON UNIONS: Captures their essence beautifully:

What does it say about my industry that the worst paper in the English language is our official newspaper, the Guild Reporter? It manages to sum up everything about unions that gripes me- the joylessness, the complaining, the looming doom, the whining about how the world is set up entirely for the wishes of small cartoon men in striped pants and top hats who own everything from Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk. It always has the flavor of the smart but unfashionable kids with no social skills sitting around the high school cafeteria bitching about the jocks, with one exception: top union management would be the only subculture that could become hipper by getting into Dungeons and Dragons. At least it would give them a new set of descriptive terms for their foes. I’d love to pick up the union paper and read “Management takes cue from Mordor, hires scab-Orks” – it would suggest they have a sense of humor.

Perfect. The aesthetic case against organized labor is, I think, irrefutable.