Author: Andrew Sullivan

An update from Massachusetts.

On Afghanistan, I wrote that  "Obama's pledge to start withdrawing troops in 2011 is now kaput … Once Washington has decided to occupy a country, it will occupy it for ever." Max Boot says I was battling a strawman:

I hope Andrew is right — not because I or anyone else is in favor of perpetually occupying Afghanistan (talk about a straw man!) — but because the only way to prevail is to show the will to stay in the long run.

My point is not that Max wants to stay there forever but that the upshot of his constant refrain of "more time" in a war already the longest in US history is permanent occupation. Greg Scoblete notes:

[Boot] conveniently declines to specify what the long run is. But why? If Boot thinks the way to leave Afghanistan is to never say we're going to leave could he at least proffer a guess as to when the U.S. will have achieved its goals in the country sufficient enough to stop transferring American wealth and risking American and NATO lives in the country?

A reader writes:

Speaking of the Iraq surge, you write that:

I did not foresee the drop in violence in Iraq – although I did foresee the failure of the surge to achieve political reconciliation.

The truth, I believe, is that the surge had little to do with the drop in violence.  Part of the drop in violence is attributable to diplomatic gains in the Anbar province (where no extra troops were sent, incidentally), and most of the rest is simply due to the basic nature of ethnic conflict: it drops off in intensity when affected areas become ethnically segregated.  What was the violence in Baghdad?  Sunni fighting Shia, Shia fighting Sunni, driving them out of their homes and killing them.  It's a pattern that we've seen time and time again: Serbs fighting Kosovars, Christians and Muslims in Bosnia, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.  The groups fight, they kill each other, they drive each other out of their homes … but there are only so many people to kill, fight, and, more importantly, drive away.  Once they're all gone–once all the Tutsis are dead, once all the Kosovars are driven out of an area, once those who have not abandoned Baghdad are living in ethnically segregated ghettos–the violence drops off in intensity simply because there aren't any enemies left in convenient proximity. 

That the winding down of this process coincided with the one year anniversary of the surge is not a testament to its success.

A reader writes:

Your post on South Park macho triggered a memory from Fallujah days in 05 – which I think was probably less than a year after Team America came out … I’d ride around with the Marines throughout the city and frequently hear Fallujans referred to as ‘durka durkas’ or ‘mohammad jihads.’ i.e., ‘check out that durka durka over there.’ Everyone seemed to know the ‘America…Fuck Yeah’ song. I don’t begrudge them for trying to find some way to laugh amidst what was increasingly an absurd and absurdly dangerous situation, but wonder if Parker & Stone have ever realized the extent to which their intended irony was lost.

And when will the troops finally echo that other classic Cartman line: "Screw you, guys. I'm going home"?

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia 12.30 pm

"Marcus Baram: In the hypercompetitive media world, some of the reaction to your story has been a little negative, that you have "hostile views" and that you're anti-war. Some have wondered how you could jeopardize your future access to sources. How do you respond to that?

Michael Hastings: Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising. My views are critical but that shouldn't be mistaken for hostile – I'm just not a stenographer. There is a body of work that shows how I view these issues but that was hard-earned through experience, not something I learned going to a cocktail party on fucking K Street. That's what reporters are supposed to do, report the story."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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No contest.

I didn’t realize that after covering the Iraq elections for Newsweek, Michael Hastings had then quit the magazine “and wrote a damning exposé about what he had seen and experienced during his stint.” Why am I not surprised?

Comments Dave Weigel made on a listserv have been made public. The most eye-catching one:

This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.

He apologizes to his readers and Matt Drudge here. James Joyner weighs in:

The buzz on Twitter and the blogs this morning is that this just goes to show that Weigel holds conservatives in contempt and having him cover the movement for a major newspaper is journalistic malpractice.   But, frankly, his feelings toward social conservatives and Tea Partiers were hardly a state secret before now.  No one who read Dave at Reason, The Washington Independent, or his Twitter feed is shocked.

Do I think someone more sympathetic to the movement would be a better fit for the beat?  I do.  It would be more insightful to get a broad spectrum view of a Tea Party rally, say, than a series of posts making fun of the looniest members of the crowd.

John Cole lays into whoever released the emails. Liz Mair goes to bat for Dave:

There are a couple of real stories that are being missed in all the coverage of Dave and his various remarks that range from stupid to snarky to sensible, but in some cases badly stated, but the big one is this: The Left, whether as an army or an army of one, has a problem with Dave, and a big one at that. 

A lot of leaking has been done with the clear objective (I believe) of ruining Dave's career, and forcing his ouster by the Washington Post.  I suspect it is happening because dave committed the cardinal sin of defending Rand Paul, a figure who has become so reviled by many on the Left that it's hard to draw a bright-line distinction between him and Saddam Hussein, by their standards (in fact, for some of them, I believe Saddam Hussein is held in less contempt).  That's a bad place for Dave to be, but he got there because he had the courage of his convictions and defending a man who many on the Right consider almost indefensible– and he did it at the Washington Post, not Reason Magazine.

The follow-on from that is that there are conservatives who are equally determined to shut Dave down because (pick your reason) a) he disagrees with them on gay marriage and other social issues b) he is friends with liberals c) he sees a lot of snake-oil salesmen involved in conservative politics and thinks they stink d) he's been prepared to report on some aspects of the conservative "movement" that occasionally appear more akin to a racket than an outgrowth of deeply-held philosophical conviction, and depict them as such and/or e) they would infinitely prefer for the Washington Post to host Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent, but no one who is even several houses away from a conservative, because it aids and abets their ability to wage a cultural war in which the media, and media bias, is target #1.

The Dish has long seen Dave Weigel as one of the brightest stars in the next generation of journalists. He deserves to prosper. But he needs to get off that listserv.