Author: Andrew Sullivan

Fred Kaplan reads a recent Pentagon report on the situation:

Here's how the report summarizes the situation in straight prose: "Some individual islands of security exist in the sea of instability or insecurity." The authors muster only two islands: the town of Mazur-i-Sharif in the north and "small contiguous areas" near the Ring Road in the south. The level of security, they add, is "significantly related to the presence of well-led and non-corrupt" units of Afghan soldiers or police.

The problem is that "well-led and non-corrupt" Afghan security forces are, as yet, rare commodities. The Afghan army and national police force are making "slow progress" toward its manpower targets because of "high attrition and low retention." Between 60 percent and 70 percent of uniformed police are "hired and deployed with no formal training." By this August, NATO troops will be mentoring Afghan police in 45 of the 80 most important districts. Yet the report notes that even well-trained police units "have regressed" after a mentoring team is reassigned elsewhere.

Joe Klein thinks we are losing. The Economist is hosting a debate on the war this week with John Nagl arguing that the war is winnable and Peter Galbraith arguing it isn't. Steinglass prods the debaters to examine the war's cost.

(Image: David Furst/Getty)

Serwer sighs:

The level of anger is just so plainly disproportionate to the matter at hand as to be self-implicating. These people aren't worried about terrorism — they're offended by the idea of Muslims being integrated into the most mundane and banal aspects of American society.

A red shirt anti-government protester receives help from others after being shot in the head as the violence in central Bangkok continues on May 17, 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand. Protesters and military clashed once again in central Bangkok after the government launched an operation following the anti-government protesters' refusal to obey orders to leave their fortified camp in the Thai capital. Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images.

Last week, in an interview with Ezra Klein, James Galbraith argued that US deficit poses "zero" risk. Len Burman counters:

Taken to its illogical extreme, Galbraith’s argument implies that there is no limit to government’s borrowing capacity (and that the money never really has to be paid back).  If that’s the case, why not dispense with the annoyance of taxes altogether?

…Galbraith thinks deficit hawks are all anti-government kooks who want to dismantle the social safety net.  In reality, Galbraith and his fellow Cheneyites are the greater threat to vulnerable populations.  If we accumulate debt until it reaches catastrophic levels, the consequence would be a necessary sudden and drastic cut in government spending (see Greece and Iceland for examples of what happens to spending after a debt crisis) as well as an economic meltdown that could impoverish a generation (see Argentina).

Drum responds:

[T]his attitude toward death surely sums up a vast chasm between the religious and the nonreligious. "Facing it is our life's task"? I can't even conceive of that. I think about death sometimes, just like everyone, and sometimes these thoughts bother me more than other times. But thinking about it all the time? Casting it as uniquely central to the human condition? That's almost incomprehensible to me. Wondering about our own finitude is one thing — I imagine we all do that from time to time — but why should this be elevated above the human ability to create art, science, mathematics, love, war, poetry, trade, government, or ethics — or the ability to wonder in the first place? Why is learning how to deal with our eventual death the defining characteristic of being human? Not just because Montaigne said so, certainly.

The sixth European – and tenth – country to grant marriage rights to gay couples is right next to Spain, making the Iberian peninsula a gay marriage zone. But adoption rights are not included. The Pope inveighed against such a move when he visited days ago. It seems the president paid no notice.

This is the first time since high school I’ve watched a guide to CPR all the way through:

Super Sexy CPR from Super Sexy CPR on Vimeo.

Jonathan Bernstein:

The elephant in the room that Beinart doesn't discuss is that Israeli leaders may feel that they don't need Jewish support in the United States, because they can substitute Christian evangelical support, with the latter less likely (or at least perceived to be less likely) to produce any sorts of constraints on the Israeli government. Personally, I think shifting from a American base of American Jews to a coalition of Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, and ideological neo-cons would be a tragic mistake for Israel…but I can certainly understand the appeal for Likud politicians. 

Yglesias:

in many ways Israel is on net benefitting from a rising tide of anti-Islamic sentiment in the western world even as its support on the American left is eroding. New anti-Muslim European political parties like Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party and the Danish People’s Party are among the most pro-Israel groupings on the continent even though in some respects they’re actually the descendants of the European anti-semitic movements of yore. We don’t have growing far-right parties in the United States, but in part that’s because violent populist nationalism with an anti-Islamic tinge is part of our mainstream conservative movement. Ultimately, these may just be the kind of friends that Israeli political elites want to have.

Ezra Klein:

I don't know where this ends. As Beinart says, one possibility is that the ranks of American Zionists cease to be dominated by mainstream Jews and instead become the province of Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christian Zionists and takes a sharp turn toward the right even as its influence ebbs. Another possibility is that this will prove the darkness before the dawn of a more reasonable turn in Israeli politics. A scarier possibility is that some sort of catastrophic event — either a terrible attack on Israel, or a terrible attack by Israel — reshapes the situation.

But Israel has to walk with care. Previous generations might have believed in "Israel, right or wrong." Their replacements may not be as willing to sacrifice moral perspective in service of tribal allegiance.

And this is where Palin comes in. She is a settler-fanatic. She wants more Jewish immigration into the West Bank. She wears a twinned US and Israel flag pin for the Tea-Party convention. She is AIPAC's last hope for denialism and a Manichean struggle in which the most atavistic feelings emerge and prevent, actual thinking. I see Palin's fundamentalist belligerence as a non-starter for the West. But it would be a catastrophe for Israel. As a reader notes:

I'm currently reading Birds Without Wings, a novel by Louis de Bernières about the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Last night I felt very squeamish about a Palin candidacy after reading this sentence:

"The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even proudly performs deeds that it would deem vile if they were done by any other."

Torture, anyone?

Chait charges that "to appeal to conservatives who don't share his beliefs about public policy, [David Frum] often frames his case" as a crass electoral calculation. Chait continues, noting that Frum predicted before the 2008 elections that Republicans would lose seats in 2010. He warns that Frum is "staking his case on electoral predictions that won't necessarily come true, which will make him easier to ignore." Frum replies:

[T]he trend lines were clear in 2008 and will emerge again as the economy recovers: a party that does not offer practical solutions to workaday problems – that builds itself on a narrow social and ethnic base – and that is more excited by protest than by governance – will not be a success in either political or policy terms.

This challenge will not be dispelled by large Republican gains in 2010. It could even become more difficult, if Republicans draw the wrong lessons from a big success. And that’s one prediction that cannot be gainsaid.

TNC posits:

I think New Yorkers only seem more smug, because there are more people in New York and thus more arrogant New Yorkers. In my time, I have watched mo-fos from everywhere from Dallas to Cleveland to Columbia, Maryland hold forth about why their neck of the woods is touched by God. This kind of person would be that way, no matter where he or she were born. Regrettably, in New York we have more of those kinds of people, because we have more of all kinds of people. It's worth remembering the sheer population size of the city–it's like ten Detroits. 

Ezra agrees. He adds:

[New Yorkers] have what's considered the greatest city in the country and can't stop talking about it. It's like an A-student bragging about his grades, or a rich guy making everybody look at his car. It's unseemly.

Martin Schneider is offended:

[C]onfronted with presumably countless examples of snobbish New Yorkers disparaging Indianapolis, Tulsa, Atlanta, or Baltimore, Klein, Coates, and Sullivan couldn't be bothered to name a single instance of anybody doing this. In this discussion, that was taken as a given, just as in a book you don't have to cite anyone to establish that Amsterdam is north of Rome. It is a truth just as self-evident, apparently.

This gets all the more astonishing if you contemplate analogous scenarios. Imagine if any of these men had endeavored to make some point about, say, Mexican-Americans in the same manner. Ahh, "Mexican-Americans are fine people and work hard, but they obsess too much about soccer and they have no interest in education," let's say. Do you think any of them would venture such a statement without casting about for some empirical evidence that what they were saying is true?