Category: Old Dish

Here’s what strikes me as the salient question right now. Why won’t the Republicans force a vote on the Murtha proposal – a phased withdrawal over six months – rather than “immediate” withdrawal? If the GOP wants to demonstrate a backbone on the war, let them force that vote. I’d passionately vote it down, if I were a Congressman. But the GOP’s proposal is again not a sign of strength. It’s a straw-man: as cheap and tawdry as the current GOP leadership. Let me add something more. How pathetic is the credibility of a commander-in-chief that while he is abroad, all hell breaks loose on the war he is allegedly waging? Bush has lost the country on this. It’s not the media’s fault, not the Democrats’, not the military’s. It’s Bush’s, and his sad excuse for a defense secretary.

If only there were more like this. But, alas, it doesn’t end well. Think of it as a story of what might have been.

ON MURTHA: I guess I should make it clear that I strongly disagree with Murtha’s notion that we should withdraw troops from Iraq, and strongly disagree with the Senate’s recent amendment all but committing us to troop withdrawal in 2006. I just believe that Murtha is a good guy, a patriot, and utterly undeserving of the partisan and vicious attacks now being leveled against him.

“One thing about Rep. Murtha that I haven’t seen in the recent news yet is that he has been visiting our wounded troops weekly at Walter Reed Army Medical Center since the war began. I reported this last year in Wired, in a story about a new kind of battlefield anesthesia pioneered in Iraq that was funded by Murtha. This man walks the talk, and Cheney and McClellan should hang their heads in shame.” I couldn’t agree more. I have to say the right-wing’s attempt to belittle, marginalize and even question the patriotism of Mutha is one of the most disgusting things I’ve yet seen from people who get more shameless by the day. Real conservatives deal with something called “reality.” They listen to critics; they worry about worse-case scenarios; they care about long-term consequences of, say, piling up debt or going to war with no real plans for peace; they respect good men like John Murtha. The people running the country right now are not conservatives. They have highjacked that tradition for their own ends. And one day, we will recover it from their hands.

We have a contender.

Some Catholics have not abandoned reason, it appears. But have they told Benedict and Schoenborn yet?

As I suspected, Pat Fitzgerald is not done yet.

In theory, it should be possible for a Republican to be both socially moderate, fiscally conservative, and dedicated to the fight against Islamo-fascism. That’s, broadly speaking, my position. But one reason I feel no real connection to today’s GOP is that there are almost no people in that position in the party as it now stands. The most reliable fiscal conservative, Tom Coburn, is a rabid gay-hater and a theocon. It’s simply a fact that, as a RedState blogger points out, not a single Republican Senator who opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment voted for the Coburn Amendment, and not a single Republican Senator who co-sponsored the latest stem cell research bill voted for the Coburn Amendment. The kind of conservatism I believe in no longer really exists in the Congress of the United States. You have to go to Britain to find it, or back a couple of decades before the Southern fundamentalists took over the GOP entirely. McCain is the best we’ve got, and God bless him. But it’s also undeniable that he has deep suspicions of economic freedom, and often sees the need for government to intervene in all sorts of areas – steroids in sports, for example, – where government, in my view, has no role whatever. Does that mean that social inclusives and fiscal conservatives should despair? I hope not. There are glimmers of hope among fiscally conservative Democrats. A McCain-led GOP would be vastly preferable to a Bush-led one. But these are dark days for individual freedom and fiscal sanity in America, and it’s no use pretending otherwise.

Dana Priest balances her devastating expose of CIA secret torture sites with evidence of what seems to me to be great CIA work in foiling and monitoring terrorism across the globe.

IRAN ON SELF-DESTRUCT? Here’s hoping. Ahmadinejad is pushing the accelerator on Islamofascism, purging all his opponents within the regime, and provoking pushback even among the clerical despots who dominate the “parliament.” Money quote:

In a sign of divisions at the top of the clerical establishment, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has until now supported Mr Ahmadinejad, said “irregularities” in the government’s behaviour would not be tolerated.

It’s not impossible for the Iranian elite to split. What’s clear is that negotiating with the current leadership is pointless.

“I’m embarrassed the United States has a vice president for torture.” – former CIA director, Stansfield Turner. It seems to me the appropriate response is not embarrassment. It’s shame.

The Bushies are all over John Murtha. Instapundit says Murtha’s been saying “basically the same thing” for over a year. That depends on what the meaning of the word “basically” is. Murtha’s own statement contains the sentences:

For two and a half years I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns.

The difference – and surely it’s a relevant one – is that Murtha is now calling for withdrawal of troops the same week the Senate went wobbly. It seems to me it would be more helpful if Republicans and conservatives offered positive arguments for how to do better instead of attacking every critic as a wuss, unpatriotic, inconsistent, or worse. Murtha spent 37 years in the Marines. He voted for the war. But, unlike some, he kept his eyes open and he’s reflecting genuine, real, patriotic worries about the war among many Americans. If he’s worried, we all should be. It doesn’t speak very well of the pro-Bush right that their first instinct is to ignore him and their second to dismiss him. But it’s no big surprise by now, is it?

AFTER WOMEN, GAYS: The Dutch heroine of the battle against Islamo-fascism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is making a new film. Her first one – the one that forced her into hiding and police protection – was about the brutalization of women in Islamic societies. Her new one will be about the Islamic fundamentalist world’s loathing and persecution of homosexuals. She sees the connection. I wish more American conservatives did.

CAN BUSH RECOVER? Lefty blogger Chris Bowers says he can’t. He has some evidence to back him up. My own view is that most people have made up their minds about Bush; and they don’t think he knows how to run a war. Here’s some more data.

BORAT’S COME-UPPANCE: This is hilarious.