Category: Old Dish

The video is grim enough; and if the marine in question is found guilty of violating rules of conduct, then he should face punishment. But I have to say I cannot stand in judgment of this young man, after what must have been brutal, terrifying days of urban conflict. This is surely what they call “what happens in wartime.” It may not be morally defensible; but it is psychologically understandable. Franly, I’m grateful for what this man, half my age, is doing with his fellows in unspeakably terrifying circumstances. Compare his action with Abu Ghraib, and you can see the difference. One a snap judgment in a furious battle context; the other a pre-meditated example of abuse and murder of prisoners in U.S. custody.

A KILLING IN FALLUJA II: From the Times of London, which has just, long after intense lobbying from yours truly, put all its content online for free:

In the south of Fallujah yesterday, US Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the US Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.

There you see the difference between the occasional horror of war and premeditated, conscious barbarism.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “‘What on earth did Jacques Chirac mean when he used these words to describe the Anglo-French relationship?’ Let’s bitch-slap him a few more times and find out.” More insight on the Letters Page.

You reading, Mr Kelly? Thanks for all your input on who should be made Time’s Person of the Year. Lance Armstrong? A little off-topic, but surely he’s worth celebration in some sense. Barry Bonds? A reader explains:

Bonds is fast staking a claim to being the greatest player in history, better than Babe Ruth. And in 2004 this guy had quite a year: fourth consecutive MVP (never happened before), 7th overall MVP (never happened before) and he’s 40 years old. He also weathered a steroids scandal, and the death of his father. Why not?

Maybe because he’s regarded by a lot of people as an asshole. (But that would disqualify a lot of others as well). Among the bad guys, Zarqawi and Arafat stand out:

Arafat invented modern terrorism, setting a precedent that a young new leader – perhaps a Palestinian, perhaps a Chechen, perhaps a Saudi (turmoil is coming to the Royals, and soon) – will take up Yasser’s torch and take it higher and further. His legacy has yet to come; he laid the cornerstone of legitimizing terror in the ‘world’s’ view by killing innocents while being a celebrity, welcomed in halls of power across the globe, ranging from the White House, the UN, and the Vatican.

Or both Arafat and Zarqawi? On a lighter note, why not Mr iPod, Steve Jobs? Then there’s the pajamahideen. Still, it’s difficult to say a media revolution in one country trumps world-historical change elsewhere. Then there’s the “gay American.” It sure was a gay year: McGreevey, Cheney, O’Donnell, Lincoln, the marriage revolution across the world. As one reader puts it,

We have them to thank for (1) electing Bush, (2) exposing the Republicans as Islamofascist equivalents, (3) exposing the Democrats as hypocrites, (4) Arafat’s death and (5) the tackiest wedding pictures of all time.

Ahem. But the marriage movement in some ways is an effort to move away from the “gay American” syndrome and to treat all of us as merely citizens, with the same rights and responsibilities. A real possibility: Christopher Reeve. But I think you have to be alive to be included. Could “just dead” count?

EDUCATION BY MURDER: Daniel Pipes on the Theo van Gogh case.

“I recognize and celebrate that our country is founded upon Judeo-Christian values. And I have pledged my life to defend America and all her values, the values that have made us the noblest experiment in history. But political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value. The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.” – John McCain, in the 2000 primary, a speech that all but guaranteed his defeat. Marshall Wittmann draws some lessons for today.

IN OKLAHOMA: Check out this conclusion to a superb Washington Post story of conflicting emotions as homosexuality comes out in the heartland. A protest by the vile Fred Phelps leads to a backlash against those who would berate a young gay man in the congregation, Michael Shackleford:

Inside the church, the congregation was standing and the six-piece guitar band was rocking. The Lord reigns … Great is the Almighty. The music and energy built until Pastor Eubanks bounded onstage. “Welcome to the reign of life,” he said. “Amen?” “Amen!” the crowd shouted, whistling and clapping. “There is darkness and there is light and we are in the middle of the light,” Eubanks said, to more thunderous applause. “Say it: God loves us all. All of us!”
After the service, several people came up to hug Janice. One woman held her in an embrace that lasted two minutes, whispering to Janice the whole time. A burly man with a crew cut gave Michael a thumbs-up. “Man, you be who you are,” Shannon Watie said, holding his Bible. “We got your back.”

Not everything is black and white. Or red and blue.

What on earth did Jacques Chirac mean when he used these words to describe the Anglo-French relationship?

I just got back from a fun luncheon for Time magazine, where a panel of me, Al Sharpton, Brian Williams, Alessandra Stanley and Coleen Rowley (the 9/11 FBI whistle-blower) discussed who should be Time’s Person of the Year. My suggestions? Karl Rove, Muhammed, or a mix of Michael Moore and Mel Gibson. But as the discussion progressed, it seemed to me that the editors would have a hard time not picking Bush. Rove was critical to Bush’s victory, but any Rove cover would inevitably be interpreted as some kind of insult to Bush himself. It would also do terribly on news stands, although the editor, Jim Kelly, said that was not a consideration. A generic person like the “terrorist”? Nah. Too defeatist and they’ve had too many generic persons of the year recently. And who other than GWB has affected the world more in the last twelve months? Sharpton was funny, as usual. Williams was very defensive about the blogosphere. And Alessandra Stanley of the NYT lamented that most blog readers were engage, and so unrepresentative of America as a whole. Yep. That’s coming from the NYT. Oh well. Any out of the box ideas? Since Jim Kelly tells me he reads the blog every day, this would be a good place to forward them. Oh, and Paula Zahn is taaall.

Lawrence Kaplan celebrates the vindication of neo-neo-conservatism in the removal of Colin Powell. Money quote:

With Condoleezza Rice at the helm–and, in all likelihood, with Undersecretary of State John Bolton as her deputy–the State Department will now be run by a team known for its rigid loyalty to the president. They, more than any other administration officials, represent authentic expressions of Bush’s foreign policy–more realistic than the Bush team’s neoconservatives but far more aggressive than its self-described “realists.” Rice, to be sure, is neither a great thinker nor a great manager. But she is a great lieutenant–that is, someone who can be relied on to convey and translate the president’s inclinations into official policy. For his part, Bolton is all of these things, plus a fierce conservative. Between the two of them, they could well transform Foggy Bottom into something that looks more like the Pentagon–only competently run.

Lawrence thinks Rumsfeld is staying on for only a little while longer – just to stick it to Powell – and that Lieberman may eventually replace him. We can dream.

THE COST OF DEMONIZATION: A powerful op-ed in the Washington Post today that does indeed lay bare the ugly dangers of the below-the-radar gay-baiting that Karl Rove unleashed in the campaign just ended. Meanwhile, Rich Lowry seems to imply that African-Americans are incapable of bigotry. Huh? I thought that was the position of the Afrocentric left.

“The decision was made to keep Rumsfeld and drop Powell because if they would have kept Powell and let [the Rumsfeld team] go, that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of failure in Iraq and our policies there. Powell is the expendable one.” – an anonymous government official in the Washington Post. Keep the denial going, guys. Keep it going.

ONE SENTENCE: From Roger Ebert. And a good piece on NPR. That’s my summary so far of liberal outrage about the murder of Theo van Gogh. Do you think if a member of the religious right had killed a Hollywood director they would have managed to say something?

YES: I meant Oprah.

It’s hard to know what her actual foreign policy instincts will be once she comes out from under the pincer movement of Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Will her Scowcroftian background re-emerge? I doubt it. If Rumsfeld leaves, we might get a better idea. But my guess is that he won’t. Now that Powell has gone, Rummy will see it as a matter of cojones that he stay for a while, if only to prevent sufficient manpower being deployed to win the war in Iraq, and to let memories of Abu Ghraib fade. (Sorry, Rummy, but mine won’t.) So: no change with the appearance of real change. In fact, the likelihood of any new tack in foreign affairs just collapsed. But the real genius of the Rice appointment is domestic. She will become the second most powerful African-American woman in America. And she will become that as a Republican icon. That has to have an impact on the way at least a small minority of black voters will view Bush (and not a few other minority voters). Add in Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Chief Justice, and you have a diversity record in top appointments that puts every previous Democrat to shame. That’s partly what Bush is doing. He won’t admit it, of course. But then it only works if he doesn’t.

An account of the untruths Colin Powell laid before the U.N. Security Council in arguing for war against Saddam. Money quote:

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

It was almost all crap, as we now know. Any self-respecting public official would have resigned as soon as that became clear – or at least apologized, as Blair has done. But Powell was in the Bush administration.

“NOT DESPERATE”: But “tense.” That’s the view of an American general in Mosul. Reassured about the situation? A large Kurdish contingent is being deployed to try and restore order in a critical Iraqi city with a very delicate ethnic mix. The barbarians keeping the over-stretched coalition forces on their toes also dismembered the body of a Mosul police officer and then displayed the limbs in the public square. Saddam Redux.

IT GETS WORSE: The amount of money siphoned from the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program in Iraq may be double what we originally feared. No surprise. Just the usual sickening feeling when it comes to the U.N.’s treatment of developing world thugs.

VAN GOGH BLEG: Can anyone point me to a single liberal American columnist who has written about the Theo van Gogh murder? Hitch doesn’t count. I’ve been a bit stunned by the silence. But maybe I’ve missed some.

That’s how many votes political scientist Alan Abramowitz believes George W. Bush won in Ohio on the marriage rights issue. Not enough to swing the state to Kerry. Nationally, the issue didn’t work for Republicans. Interestingly, of those in exit polls who favored civil unions for gay couples, most were Bush voters. The Economist explores some of the nuances here.

PRO-GAY CONSERVATIVES: No, I’m not the only one.

BEAGLE NEWS UPDATE: Not only Muslims can gain from getting beagles. here’s an email I just received:

I empathize with Ahmed Tharwat’s beagle experience, and agree that maybe beagles are the answer to cross-cultural understanding. It may even bridge the red state/blue state gap and bring about the time for healing that seems to be evading us.
As a Republican living smack between in the Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan neighborhoods here in Washington, D.C., I had grown accustomed to dirty looks and rolled eyes sent my way whenever I stepped out wearing my “W 2004” hat.
But at the worst, most frenzied depths of Campaign 2004, I adopted my beagle, Shorty. Suddenly, regardless of the W hat, partisan politics was tossed aside among the Kerry/Edwards lawn signs and window stickers of Dupont Circle. Men and women of all stripes stopped me to make a fuss over Shorty and chat about dogs. The best example is the young woman in a DNC t-shirt who, clipboard in hand, began to ask me if I wanted to help kick George W. Bush out of the Oval Office, saw my hat, then saw my dog, and said, “Oh never mind. What kind of dog is that?”

Works every time.