Category: Old Dish

Two books worth checking out in the aftermath of November 2: “The Right Nation,” by my old friends, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, and “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” by Thomas Franks. This isn’t an endorsement of either book (I found Franks unconvincing) but they’re good resources to ponder the questions raised.

David Frum is re-writing history:

Now the battle [for Falluja] has begun. What is to come we cannot know. But we can know this: Fully aware of the stakes, American voters massively rejected the candidate who promised to put an end to battles like Fallujah–and massively voted in the candidate who pledged to do whatever was necessary to win these battles.

Now, it’s perfectly fair to say that the key to Bush’s victory was his unambiguous support of military strength to fight terrorism. But it doesn’t seem fair to me to describe Kerry’s position as the abdication of military might in Iraq. Kerry backed Bush’s future plan for Iraq; in fact, Bush’s plan owed much to Kerry’s. And the solution in Iraq is never and can never be purely military. If Frum believes that, he is asking for a come-uppance. What if we win the battle for Falluja and lose the war for democratic legitimacy in Iraq? The balance between military force and political skill is a delicate one and critical to success in Iraq. Kerry and Bush placed differing emphases on each part of the equation. Yep, most Americans backed Bush. But Frum seems to be arguing that no such balance is necessary.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “God gave this President and this President’s Party one more chance … God heard the fervent prayers of millions of values voters to keep His hand on America one more time despite our national sins of denying the right to life, despite ignoring the Biblical injunction against acts which are ‘an abomination unto the Lord’ and despite the blatant attempt to remove God from the public square.” – Paul Weyrich, Republican operative. Only one vote counted, apparently. And it was divine.

It’s simply impossible to know how things are going there from this distance. But I was concerned to read the following on Stratfor (subscription only):

No Iraqi army or national guard unit fought in Al Fallujah, sources close to the Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) say. Iraqi national guard units reportedly have refused to attack guerrilla positions; their commanders have been unable to make soldiers move forward and some officers are siding with the troops. Only the Iraqi army’s special forces unit, which is mostly Kurdish, helped search for hidden guerrillas behind U.S. Marine lines outside the city. Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have deserted to bases around Al Fallujah, the sources added.

Stratfor is not a lefty outfit. It’s just an excellent source for military analysis. Belmont Club, on the other hand, thinks things are going swimmingly:

I believe (speculation alert!) that the enemy mobile defense is nearly at an end; that his active response has probably fallen to pieces much quicker than he anticipated and they are probably going to concentrate their resistance into mutually supportive strongpoints or explosive barriers fairly soon. The enemy’s remaining hope is to hit the “jackpot” by demolishing a building or blowing up a street just as US forces occupy or overrun it. As they become squeezed into a smaller and smaller area, the risk that US forces will run into an exploding house or building will increase. But the rapid progress of the last two nights may be tempting US commanders to accept the risks and snap at the enemy’s heels. Going fast may prevent the enemy from setting up their defense.

Belmont Club, of course, is a pro-Bush partisan site. But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong in this case. And, given the overwhelming superiority of the coalition forces, military victory is surely not in much doubt. The question is: how many civilian casualties? How many insurgents killed? How successfully did the Iraqi units perform? What is the political fall-out? Let’s hope for the best.

WHAT’S THE 36TH? Defense Tech has the skinny on the Iraqi armed forces in Falluja. Basically, they’re Kurds.

A round-up of Begala Awards nominees from Deutschland. (Newbies who are unused to my occasional facetious awards can find the explanations here.) (While you’re at it, if you want to change the color scheme of the site, click the little “Black and White” button at the top of the Dish.)

THE REALITY-BASED DOLLAR?: Dan Drezner looks at the worrying trends behind the dollar’s decline.

SLATE HITS BOTTOM: Yep, they have an entire article on the fact that at the end of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” (transcript here), I got up and readjusted my power-glutes. Slow news day? It was the first thing my boyfriend pointed out to me when I called him after the show. The reason? Slate demands an answer. It itched.

A HATER OF GOD’S PEOPLE: James Dobson, the social policy director of the Bush administration, had an interesting exchange with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Josh Marshall has the details.

“Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.” – Maureen Dowd, unable to move on.org.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE II: “I hope we all realize that, as of November 2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be led even closer to the guillotine.” – Larry Kramer, in a speech to the gay community in Manhattan Sunday night. I’m very fond of Larry, but understatement is not his strong suit.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE III: “Freud stayed in Vienna until Hitler had completely taken over the country, but I don’t want to be wrong about when it’s time to leave. My fear is that I won’t know when to get out.” – Peggy Bowen, BBC News.

Pravda takes a look at the American religious right.

THE NEW CW: Marriage rights had at most a trivial impact on this election.

THANKS AGAIN: Just a word of thanks for all your emails about the Bill Maher show. I’m really grateful, but it’s simply impossible for me to respond to even a fraction of them. There have been a couple of thousand. If you’re new here, please hang out and get ticked off/amused/inspired/enraged. The point is not agreement, but engagement.

CORRECTION: Yesterday’s post may have exaggerated the number of people in previous election cycles citing “moral values” as their concern in exit polls. In previous years, voters could pick two issues, rather than one, and so a direct comparison is impossible. The broader point, however, holds.

The war in Iraq has now officially re-started for the third time. I’m counting 1990, 2003, and November 2004. We are rightly focusing on the coalition’s attempts to retake Falluja. But we should not ignore the insurgents’ previous onslaught:

Insurgents on Sunday again targeted police stations and other symbols of the interim government. Twenty-two police officers were killed in Haditha and Haqlaniya, two towns west of Fallujah, and the attackers included foreign Arabs, according to news reports. Many of the officers were lined up and shot, according to the reports. Those assaults followed a flurry of car bombings and mortar attacks Saturday that killed more than 30 people in Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city about 65 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed the city from insurgents last month in an operation that has been cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.
Twenty-one Iraqi National Guard recruits were killed over the weekend as they were returning to their homes in Najaf after traveling to the capital to join up. The Najaf police chief, Ghalib Jazaari, said gunmen, tipped off by informers in the recruiting office, killed 13 of the recruits Saturday and eight more Sunday as they passed through the town of Latifiyah, a hotbed of insurgents about 70 miles north of Najaf. “We have the bodies of the first 13 here,” Jazaari said.

So Samarra – the success story – sees a new bloodbath. Allawi imposes martial law without an army to enforce it. And the possibility palpably exists for a full-scale national uprising in response to the battle for Falluja. This really is the third Iraq war. And this time, thanks largely to decisions made by this president, it is by no means certain who will win.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole. At this point, the government can’t even protect itself. How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American Army accompanies him!” – Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars. I guess that bid for reconciliation just collapsed.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH: In Holland, a mural depicting the words “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in response to the Jihadist murder of Theo van Gogh is sand-blasted for spreading intolerance. The message is allegedly “racist.” It is as if liberal society wants to commit suicide.

I must say I was greatly relieved to see Hugh Hewitt’s sane post telling conservatives not to go ape-shit over Arlen Specter. I hope Hewitt’s not the only Republican concerned with overkill. We have all learned that this president’s biggest mistakes have occurred when he was convinced he was invincible. Success in Afghanistan led him to construct a war-plan for Iraq that was far too optimistic. Success in the initial phases of the Iraq war led him to the “Mission Accomplished” embarrassment. A clear victory in this election – but no landslide – has now apparently led him to contemplate Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. And we’re also told by Karl Rove that “if we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal, and the ideal is that marriage ought to be, and should be, a union of a man and a woman.” By inference, the hopes of gay couples to belong to their own family and society are somehow non-existent; and the commitment of one gay person to another is somehow “indecent.” On “Meet The Press,” Rove also argued that even civil unions backed by “a few local elected officials” should be banned. Bill Bennett must be thrilled. I had hoped that this president might use his victory to unite. But he is dividing more aggressively than ever.

LIFE IN LA: I had another wonderful couple of days in Los Angeles. My official view is that I hate it here. But whenever I spend time, I find myself loving it. One of my dearest friends, Robert, lives here (he made and makes this website possible), and he always takes care to show me the atypical L.A. Last time, we spent a few hours in the new cathedral downtown – an astonishingly beautiful and contemporary expression of Latino Catholicism. This time, my trip was a real mix of things. Friday: Robert and I made our usual pilgrimage to Venice Beach. The hipsters, hobos, stoners, and steroid-boys always cheer me up. Friday night: major after-hours season-closing party for “Real Time.” Don’t remember much. Saturday: er, I slept a lot. Saturday night, I dropped by a party thrown by some “Simpsons” writers, and bumped into old Harvard pals. On to a quick gay fix at the Abbey where I got hit on by a beefy anti-Chomsky homo. Most flattering. Crashed. Sunday morning went to church, i.e. the Apple store in the Grove, and then took in a gorgeous John Adams piece and some over-the-top Shostakovich in Frank Gehry’s Philharmonic crumple. Quick afternoon look at MOCA, and a trip through the Ed Ruscha retrospective. Can you get more East Coasty? It was made even better by staying right next to the CBS studios in Fairfax, across the street from Farmer’s Market. You can walk everywhere for food, movies, coffee, books, or just people-watching. I usually feel at a loss in L.A. because I don’t know how to drive a car. But not this time. I even bumped into a Ptown acquaintance on the street. I guess it goes to show that stereotypes have a limited usefulness. Classical music, peerless architecture, old friends and walk, walk, walk. All in L.A. And it rained too. Heavenly.

“MORAL VALUES”: Here’s a fascinating piece of data. The percentage of people who said in 2004 that their vote was determined by the issue of “moral values” was 22 percent. In 1992, if you add the issues of abortion and family values together, that percentage was 27 percent. In 1996, it was 49 percent. In 2000, it was 49 percent. So the domestic moral focus halved in 2004. Obviously, the war took precedence, especially if you combine the categories of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism more generally. Again: the Republicans should be wary of over-playing their hand. If they believe the entire country is the religious right, the backlash could begin very soon.

Islamist death threats reach the blogosphere. I guess it had to happen.

A CHASTENED REPUBLICAN: Yes, this was an emotional election. Here’s one reader response:

As the election approached, I became deeply critical of you due to your decision to vote for Kerry. My vote for Bush wasn’t motivated by homophobia or any other “values issue.” (Is homophobia a family value?) Like many people in Connecticut, I supported Bush because I thought, after 9/11, that he would be preferable to Kerry as a wartime leader. I understand why people think I’m wrong about that. It’s no accident, however, that Bush lost to Kerry in New Jersey and Connecticut by a lot less than he lost to Gore in those same states in 2000. It sure wasn’t because Rove turned out the homophobic vote up here.
But seeing things a little more clearly and calmly now, I have to say that I am embarrassed by what happened to gays this year. They were crassly exploited by the political party I supported, and the other party didn’t do enough to protect them. Not enough people stood up to say “this is wrong.” I sure as hell didn’t. I just wanted my guy to win. I’m sorry that happened.
I realize that this apology is probably worth a bucket of warm spit to you. But you should know that I’ve talked to several other people who voted for Bush, but now have the same sense of buyer’s guilt I do. I think that means that next time they start trying to take people’s rights away, maybe more of us will stand up and say “this is wrong.” I solemnly promise that I will.

I only hope that the majority of Repuhblicans who do not want to scapegoat and target gay couples will stand up and be counted in the next few years. We need them desperately.

Check out this BBC comedy show. Three minutes in, and they’re laughing about shooting Bush.