Author: Andrew Sullivan

Chuck Schumer owns the whole strategy of punishing Gazans for voting for Hamas:

“The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re gonna get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go makes sense. “

I think it's useful to have this on the table. The U.S. supports democracy in the Middle East, but if it leads to the wrong results, then the voters need to have their lives made as miserable as possible, short of starvation. Greenwald vents:

That's Chuck Schumer:  suffocate Gazans; champion Bush national security appointees; punish those with insufficient devotion to Israel; serve Wall Street.  And that, by definition, is the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Ken Silverstein hates US soccer coverage:

There is no such thing as an “upset draw.” Next thing you know the U.S. will lose a game by three goals and the media will say it’s an “upset loss” because it might have lost by six.

Being on the terrorist watch list is not grounds for being denied a legal firearm. Louis Klarevas has details:

The Government Accountability Office has found that, from February 2004 to February 2010, 1,225 purchases involving individuals on the watch list were submitted for a Brady background check. Ninety-one percent of these transactions were approved; the other 9 percent were denied for reasons other than the purchasers' suspected terrorist activities. In 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who was also on the FBI's radar, bought a gun that he used to execute a drive-by shooting outside a U.S. military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. One soldier was killed, another wounded. Similarly, anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder legally purchased the handgun he used to kill Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009 from a pawn shop in Lawrence, Kansas.

Bipartisan bills to reform the screening process have languished in committee because of pressure from the gun lobby. This must make Glenn Reynolds' head explode.

Beinart notes the news out of Afghanistan, and the lack of it:

One might think that this emotional isolationism would bring demands for military retrenchment. But ironically, the public’s boredom and disillusionment with international affairs actually makes it easier for the Obama administration to sustain US deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Richard Nixon realized when he ended the draft in 1973, and thus sucked the oxygen out of the anti-Vietnam movement, it’s easier to prosecute a war when that war doesn’t directly affect the vast majority of Americans. Today, even more than then, war’s human costs have been confined to a military clique—a clique whose ability to organize politically is limited by law.

In George W. Bush’s second term, Iraq became a dominant political issue nonetheless, largely because it came to symbolize a broader discontent with the people in power and the direction of the country. But among liberals, Obama remains far more popular than Bush, and because most liberals did not oppose the Afghan war from the start, they are not as passionately opposed to it now. Were the Tea Partiers true libertarians—genuinely opposed to expensive and intrusive government—they would take up the anti-war banner. But with the exception of Ron Paul and a few others, they’re not true libertarians; they’re anti-welfare staters, and so they treat Iraq and Afghanistan as irrelevant to their anti-government crusade.

Chait responds to my objections:

I think pressure should be placed on Israel to halt — or, ideally, reverse — settlement construction, and the U.S. should recognize that Palestinian rejection of any Jewish state is the deeper problem…

Now, to be sure, I do not agree with Andrew about the Middle East. I am not sure how far he would like to see the United States go in punishing Israel for the settlements, but I'm certain it's much further than I'd like to go, or that Obama has gone. I'm confident that whatever this distinction is, he'll use it to claim that my opinion is functionally that of a Likudnik. Through his switch from ultra Israel hawk to ultra Israel dove, the one constant has been an insistence upon binary thinking. Before, anybody who disagreed with him was making excuses for anti-Semitic terrorism. Now anybody who disagrees with him is making excuses for Avigdor Lieberman. Thus his assumption that, because I think Palestinian rejectionism constitutes a greater problem than settlements, I must think settlements are not a problem at all. And thus his final conclusion that I'm functionally a Likudnik.

Chait deploys his usual debating tactic: turn these arguments into psychoanalyses of his opponents (Beinart, moi), and dredge up past history. But for the record: I too believe that Palestinian rejectionism is a huge problem, but not entirely irrational or surprising. I favor action on the settlements because that alone is currently practical, and could help shift that dynamic into a virtuous cycle with no cost whatever to Israeli security. For the record too: Chait is formally anti-settlement and did not personally blame Obama for bringing the settlements up as a precondition for starting direct talks. He has a post to prove it, which I missed. And so our differences are both small and large.

Our large difference is in the word "formally". In the context of Israel's continuing acts of aggression and provocation, insisting that that the settlements are a lesser matter than a long-standing Arab mindset toward Israel is practically, effectively to favor the status quo, and settlement expansion. And this switch toward pressuring Israel first is not a binary switch. Many of the current critics of Israel were indeed once strong supporters of it; but the long-term demographic crisis, the increasing extremism of Israeli politics, the rise of religious fundamentalism, the strategic costs to the US of Israeli belligerence, and the emergence of a much more adult leadership in the West Bank – believe it or not, some of us change our minds when the facts change. We saw the new administration in Washington as offering Netanyahu a way out. Netanyahu saw it as a threat to be waited out until a Cheney-style successor emerges, and the real war can begin.

And under these dire and dangerous circumstances, in which it appears we could soon cross a Rubicon toward a global religious war, many of us are frustrated by the world-weary pro-Israel pundits who say they're against settlements but never ever propose to do anything to make them stop growing, let alone reverse them. This, after all, was the point of my post: when will Chait actually put up? And why should we believe this positioning is more than positioning, when it always ends up backing Israel?

Chait could pwn me if he were to say what he'd like the administration to do now, with respect to increasing pressure on Israel to halt or "ideally" reverse the settlements. But he hasn't spelled this out – except he's convinced his ideal mix wouldn't be as tough as my own preferences (yes, I'd use aid as leverage if I could, and the UN veto if necessary). I think what many of us are waiting for from the anti-anti-Israel camp is some sense that they'd ever draw the line somewhere.

Instead we get a concession like this from Goldblog about Fayyad and Abbas. They are

practical men who are trying to create reality-based policies that actually serve the best political and economic interests of their people.

… and you wait breathlessly for the pay-off … but no!

As soon as the PA becomes a viable partner, attention must immediately be paid to Hamas and to the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza as a reason for inaction:

Twice in ten years they've withdrawn from territory, and twice they've been hit by rockets. They are not doing this again, not until the politics of the Palestinians — and the politics of Iran — change dramatically.

And so Israel just "can't" freeze settlements now. Not even freeze? Would a freeze mean a threat to Israel's security? Would ending the provocations in East Jerusalem really mean an existential threat? How many excuses can be made for Netanyahu until they become essentially supporting arguments for Netanyahu?

So you see the Chait point again: the settlements are not an issue until the Israelis manage to believe the Palestinians aren't out to get them. But continuing the settlements weakens Fayyad and Abbas, strengthens Hamas, enrages the Palestinians and further convinces Israel that the Palestinians are out to get them. And the beat goes on …

I guess what I'm saying is that when it comes to Israel, we are at a critical point: do we push them or not? I say: push. Chait says: wait … for something that will never happen without some Israeli concessions. My default position if Israel, as a sovereign state, continues to occupy the West Bank, collectively punish the people of Gaza, threaten to attack Iran, kill unarmed civilians and take out terror suspects using the passports of alleged allies? Disengage entirely. The US should not be held responsible for a situation over which the US president has no real power.

Sebastian Mallaby's article on economist Paul Romer and charter cities is worth a read:

When you listen carefully, you realize that much of what Romer is saying should not be controversial. A few development economists argue that geography is destiny, but most share Romer’s conviction that decent rules are paramount. After all, Asia accounted for fully 56 percent of world income in 1820, only 16 percent in 1950, and a substantial 39 percent in 2008; what changed over this period was rules, not geography. Equally, Romer’s contention that a developing country can achieve good government by importing the credibility of foreigners fits with mainstream thinking. When Panama or Ecuador decides to do business in dollars, or when Slovenia embraces the euro, each country is importing the credibility of a foreign central bank. Similarly, joining the World Trade Organization is a proven way to import the rich world’s tariff structure, intellectual-property rules, and domestic regulations—and, just as important, to persuade investors that the reform is permanent. Importing foreign election monitors or peacekeepers can compensate for weak political institutions or security forces. And so on.

But Romer is also urging us to reexamine assumptions about citizenship and democracy, and this is where he gets more radical.

In the kind of charter city he imagines, the governor would be appointed by Canada or some other rich nation, but the people who work there would come from poor countries—the whole point, after all, is to bring the governance of the developed world to workers in undeveloped places. It follows that the workers in Romer’s charter city wouldn’t be citizens in the full sense. They would be offered whatever protections the founding charter might lay down, and they would have to take them or leave them. Rather than getting a vote at the ballot box, Romer is saying, the residents of a charter city would have to vote with their feet. Their leaders would be accountable—but only to the rich voters in the country that appointed them.

Dan Savage picks up on this Charles Blow column from a couple days back:

Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality…there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’s like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.

Dan adds:

So straight men are telling pollsters that they're okay with gay relationships because they don't want people thinking they're gay or anything. That kind of homophobia I can live with.

Actually, I suspect we're beginning to see reality come to the fore. Sometimes I wonder whether the fight over gay rights isn't partly a war between gay people. Of course, plenty of folks with fundamentalism in their bones oppose gay dignity and equality. But the virulence and passion often come from those who may have some personal stake in this. I'm thinking particularly of repressed gay men seeking to reinforce the ideologies or doctrines that can make their repressed misery more bearable. If you've lived your life on the assumption that homosexuality is shameful, if you've even constructed an entire career on this (such as cover in a celibate priesthood), and if you've lived a double life as a result – emotionally starved, sexually compulsive or shut down – your resentment of the next generation letting go and leading happy, contented "virtually normal" lives must be personally either threatening or enraging.

Most non-fundie straight men I know, once they get over the ick factor, are either indifferent to or supportive of gay men's rights. The Prada shoes brigade, however …

And an apology:

So while Rand Paul has other issues to concern himself with right now, and while I probably rank far below Rachel Maddow and others on the list of people he might not be fond of, I want to apologize to him and say that I feel like a total shitheel for bringing this all down on him. There are certain things that are simply out of bounds in national politics, and messing with somebody's favorite band is definitely among them.