Category: Old Dish

Yes, I get anti-Semitic mail. Here’s a classic: “AndJew Sullivan. no, that won’t work … What does it take to be a shill?” Charming.

AN EAGLE NETWORK: An organization has begun bringing together socially liberal, fiscally conservative souls in Britain. It’s called the Wave Network. Check it out.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “It’s extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government.” – House Speaker Hastert’s spokesman, John Feehery. He should be careful what he wishes for.

FISKING FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: Josh Foust does a good job on the Christian right group’s poll-tested talking points on marriage rights for gays.

The president’s speech last night gets a B+ rating from yours truly. He did much of what he needed to do, even explaining what has gone on in Fallujah and Karbala and Kufa. It began abruptly, but soon settled down. The critical point that the swift victory over Saddam paradoxically made the occupation more difficult – because Saddam’s minions were able to escape, melt into the population and fight another day – was made early on. Bush could have made more of it – and should do in the weeks ahead. People need to be reminded who the enemy is; and why he’s worth fighting. My own sense of what was new was the clear and emphatic declaration that the transfer of sovereignty June 30 will be real. That’s critical – and critical to deliver. I also liked the way the president unapologetically linked what we are doing in Iraq with the broader war on terror. Critics like to believe that Saddam was somehow utterly unconnected to broader terror, had no potential to enable it, and was too secular to cooperate with al Qaeda. They’re wrong on all counts. In the wake of 9/11, a Saddam-Zarqawi alliance would have been a terrible threat. Now we have a Baathist-Zarqawi insurgency. And we have had a year to defeat it. Threading the needle of sovereignty, transfer of power, battling terrorism and coordinating elections is still a massive undertaking. But I was reassured by the president’s speech. It’s a beginning. He now has to make a version of it again and again and again. He is up against a press corps determined to make this transition fail, in order to defeat a Bush presidency. He will need true grit to withstand it.

STILL DEFENSIVE: But I must also add some comments about the manner of Bush’s speech. He seemed exhausted, which is hardly surprising. But he also seemed defensive. He doesn’t want to concede errors, because, in this polarized climate, the opposition will seize on them for their own narrow purposes. But he should trust the public and dwell more on the inevitable setbacks and failures of warfare. He should not be afraid to tell us when we have suffered losses. He should not be wary of conceding that he and everyone else under-estimated the strength and tenacity of the insurgency. He still seems brittle to me in his accounts of what has transpired. It makes optimism less credible and hope more elusive.

“Some say that the US must withdraw from Iraq right now for the best of Iraqis; I say, Ok, the US withdrew from Somalia a long time ago and what was the result? What’s Somalia like now?
Humanity, in its nature, has an inclination to move forwards and those people are acting against this nature and once again I tell you that their job is very easy and it won’t need much to be done while my job is a hard one that needs a lot but I’m not giving it up.
A prosperous and democratic Iraq will be a reality; it’s just a matter of time. Everyone should believe in this, more than this, we should start to feel it from this moment and the obstacles we’re facing right now will be a history that we would only discuss in the future to get some lessons from.
Finally, I have a question to the anti-change and to our friends in the biased media wherever they might be; if all your stories were true and if we were wrong about everything we did, what suggestions would you offer to make things better? what are your plans?
What?! What did you say? I’m listening.” – Mohammed, on the indispensable Iraqi, blog, Iraq the Model.

THE U.N.’S SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: You probably won’t read much about this. no photos, after all. But U.N. soldiers in the Congo have been allegedly sexually exploiting rape victims in refugee camps. (Hat tip: Michael Moynihan.)

THE WEDDING PARTY: I owe you a further explanation. I’m impressed by the fact that the military found plenty of evidence that the bombed site was indeed a way-station for foreign terrorists to infiltrate Iraq. Whether “wedding party” innocents were also killed is still unclear. Belmont Club has a useful examination of the nuances. But what is undeniable is that this was not a strike at a mere party caused by celebratory gunfire, which was the initial party-line. It was a legitimate military target. If civilians were killed, the responsibility lies with those terrorists who use civilians as human shields for their deadly work.

The slide in Bush’s approval ratings is almost entirely due to Republicans’ losing faith, according to the Washington Post poll:

Bush’s political standing has been weakened by an erosion in support among independents and by signs of potential disaffection among his typically rock-solid Republican base. Democrats continue to give the president low marks across the board.
A month ago Bush’s job approval rating stood at 51 percent, and virtually all of the decline since then is attributable to a drop of 7 percentage points among Republicans.

Interesting. I wonder which Republicans and why. My hunch: Bush is seeing the support of libertarians and fiscal conservatives wane. And with his expansion of the nanny-state and huge spending increases, you can see why. But Kerry still cannot make the sell. By the way, I’m not too impressed with the Zogby poll showing Kerry winning in many battleground states. It’s an online poll, and I cannot even find the data on how many people in each state participated. Enough said.

OLD EUROPE VERSUS NEW EUROPE: Geitner Simmons explains how Chancellor Schroder is trying to export Germany’s high-tax economic torpor to the Eastern European tigers. If they don’t want it, he’s going to try and force it upon them.

A must-read analysis on National Review Online.

For once, a balanced and helpful slide-show, explaining the complex realities of fighting terror in the Gaza Strip. Good for the Beeb. There’s hope yet.

“Yesterday’s [Guardian] front page describing the crimes of the US military in Iraq and the Israeli military in Palestine denote [sic] for me, late in the day, a crossing of the Rubicon. I have until now, perhaps foolishly, been prepared to admit that in both situations one could agree to differ with the apologists. But no longer. These are not “military actions”, but crimes against humanity. The occupations in both cases have no basis in law. They amount to the brutal repression of civilian populations. As a British citizen I am ashamed to be party to all that. Those old enough to remember will recollect that the French Resistance were held to be heroes when they killed the German occupiers. I did not rejoice at German deaths then, any more than I rejoice at Israeli, American and, yes, British deaths now. But there is no difference.” – Canon Paul Oestreicher, in the Guardian. Oliver Kamm deconstructs.

The Fox News poll has got to depress Democrats. The president is still beating Kerry easily in the battleground states. Then there’s this piece of news:

The beheading of American civilian-Nick Berg-by Muslim terrorists was a much more upsetting news story to Americans than the prisoner abuse scandal (60 percent and eight percent respectively), with 29 percent saying both news reports were equally upsetting.

The blogosphere understood that. The mainstream media didn’t seem to. Why? Here’s part of the answer:

[S]ince 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22% to 34% while conservatives have only inched up from 5% to 7%.

We knew that, didn’t we? Maybe someone could let Eric Alterman know.

After a while, you get to know how to read the major media about Iraq. Much good news will be reluctantly produced and buried within the paper. All bad news will get banner headlines. But today, the Washington Post leads with the Coalition’s successes in Kufa and the Times publishes this story by Edward Wong, whose reporting has been excellent. The Mahdi Army, Moqtadr al-Sadr’s gang, has essentially withdrawn from Karbala under fire in part from Iraqi soldiers, trained by the U.S. Special Forces. The militia has also withstood terrible casualties in Kufa, and may be on the verge of collapse. Fallujah, for the time at least, seems relatively pacified (if by worrying means). We are, in other words, seeing some modest military progress in Iraq. Politically, we are just at the beginning of a critical period, but, again, the signs are not so awful. The jostling for positions in the new government is surely a sign that Iraqis are beginning to battle politically for new power. Better than a civil war:

A spokesman for Mr. Brahimi said in a phone interview from Baghdad that the United Nations envoy was shuttling among Iraq’s various factions and constituencies, including many of the 400 political parties that have identified themselves since Mr. Hussein was overthrown.
“There’s still a lot of maneuvering going on,” said the spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi. “There’s still shuttling back and forth between all the parties and players. We’re not there yet.”

But you can begin to see the shape of a future settlement. I chart the administration’s arguments for guarded optimism here.

NOT IN THE PAPERS: Jeff Jarvis does a useful summary of the Iraqi blogs. Big surprise: they’re not as gloomy as the Western press.

THREE NEW POSTS: Opposite are three recent pieces: on the integrative promise of May 17 in Massachusetts, the deployment of the Eucharist in the 2004 campaign, and the Bush administration’s strategy in post-Abu Ghraib Iraq.

Allegedly killed by U.S. forces, he seems to have two names.

ROMNEY HAS A POINT: A while back, I referred to an obscure 1913 Masscahusetts law, designed to prevent inter-racial couples using Massachusetts to leverage marriage rights in their home states. Mitt Romney wants to deploy that statute today to prevent out-of-state gay couples from doing the same thing as their multi-racial forebears once tried to do. I’m no fan of the statute (or of Romney), but it seems to me that the governor is right. It’s the law. And it should be enforced or repealed – not ignored or violated. Marriage rights advocates will be making a serious error if they try and use Massachusetts to coerce other states into recognition. Gay couples from states which specifically ban marriage rights for gays should therefore be prevented from marrying in Massachusetts: that’s the deal of federalism. If, however, the couples come from states that have not banned such marriages, and whose attorneys-general have said they will recognize such marriages, then I see no reason to prevent them. But the law should also be applied to those heterosexual couples who fall under its purview. As blogger John Aravosis points out,

Massachusetts permits an 18 year old to get married, no questions asked. Nebraska and Mississippi, however, require that same 18 year old to have a notarized consent form from their parent before conducting the marriage. If the Massachusetts clerks weren’t presented with those consent forms, then the out-of-state heterosexuals weren’t legally married (or so it would seem). There are lots of other requirements that vary by each state. If any of those were not met when an out of stater got married in Massachusetts, their marriage could be invalid.

Romney should enforce the law, acknowledge that it was designed to stop inter-racial marriages, and apply it equally to straights and gays today. My fundamental belief is that the right to marry is unalienable. But it was for inter-racial couples in 1913 as well – and they were still denied it for decades. Social change takes time and persuasion. Federalism requires and prudence dictates that we restrict marriage rights to those few states that enact them or recognize them elsewhere. Pushing for a national decision right now would be unwise and foolhardy. We have won an amazing victory. Let’s not throw it away with extremism.