Category: Old Dish

Well, maybe it was late, maybe I was tired, but many of you had a very different take on Bush’s press conference yesterday. Here’s a typical email:

Did you watch a different press conference than I did? I mean, that the baseline is average means you’re going in the wrong direction. Bush looked tired, nervous, easily confused; he had troubling answers questions, he couldn’t address points, and at times he looked just purely uninformed. Two friends of mine, one conservative and one liberal, called me after the conference. The conservative said that “Bush looked like the first year (law student) who didn’t do his reading and just wouldn’t admit it to the [socratic] prof[essor].” The liberal said “The sad part about this is that conservatives are going to call it a strong performance. We now have a President whose not much different from a Special Ed student. We clap and cheer every time he has his shoes on the right feet.”

I mean, what standard are we going to hold our President to? Do you know the answer to any of these questions that we’re asked?

– What was the Administration’s biggest error in judgment (and what, if anything, is being done about it)?
– Why is Bush meeting with the 9/11 Commission with Cheney?
– What is going to happen on June 30th, who will be involved, and what then?

I mean, if a press conference is meant to actually inform people, then he did a poor job. This one clearly was just meant to up the votes; and I don’t think it did a good job of that either. How can reasonable and intelligent men justify that performance given that the President of the United States should be held to the standard of person capable of running the free world? If you can’t name 25 people that you know personally off the top of your head who could have exceeded the performance of Bush in that speech, then you need new friends. I can name 25; and most of them I would run very, very, fast towards Canada if they ever were handed the keys to the military.

But this was not a generals exam. It was a political event. the point of press conferences is not to naswer every question in full; some of those questions might not yet have answers; some of the answers may not be wise to state publicly yet. But impressions like these are inevitably subjective. I gave my honest assessment.

ONE MAN: Can make a difference. A very simple invention in Nigeria may transform part of that country’s economy and society: one pot placed within another. I don’t know why, but this is the kind of story you don’t read about in the papers, but it gives you hope for Africa.

BARRED FROM THE SCHOOL BOARD: The anti-gay backlash is in full swing in Iowa. And it’s in a gruesome phase in Durham, North Carolina.

Christian right leader, Randall Terry, has a troubled gay son. Dick Cheney has an untroubled gay daughter. Anti-gay crusader Pete Knight has a gay son. Charles Socarides, the chief proponent of reparative therapy for homosexuals, has a gay son. Phyllis Shlafly has a gay son. When will these people begin to understand that being gay is not a “choice”; it’s a fact of human nature?

I’ve just watched the press conference later on C-SPAN. Not only was the transcript encouraging. I found the president clear, forceful, impassioned, determined, real. This was not an average performance. I found it Bush at his best. He needs to do it more.

The best news from Iraq is that the moderate Shiite establishment is actively trying to defuse the al Sadr rebellion. Here’s the money graf from Burns:

Mr. Adnan said that if the Americans agreed not to send forces into Najaf, and not to seek the immediate arrest of Mr. Sadr on the pending warrant, which charges him with complicity in the April 2003 murder of a rival cleric, Mr. Sadr would agree to dismantle his militia. The clerics at the meeting included the sons of three of Iraq’s most venerated grand ayatollahs, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is regarded as the country’s most powerful religious figure.

Al Sadr is cornered. Better still, if this showdown forces the other Shiite figures into a more proactive and constructive role – as potential rulers of Iraq – then we will have found people to whom real power can be transferred. I’m still optimistic. Alas, I was giving a talk down here in Mississippi when the president was talking and so cannot write about his appearance or demeanor. I liked what he had to say, however. Better to have made a speech a month ago, taking responsibility for the lack of WMD stockpiles and reminding Americans that we still have a very long slog ahead of us in Iraq. But, unless I missed a truly bad performance, the transcript looks competent to me. Which is all we can expect from Bush in unscripted settings.

MORE ENCOURAGEMENT: Yes, I think John Kerry’s faith in the United Nations is misplaced. But I was struck by how grown-up his Washington Post op-ed was yesterday. Can you imagine him saying anything like that during the primary season? It was at least a relief that the Democrats are not going to use Iraq as a political football in the future quite as egregiously as they have so far. The most reassuring passage: “The president must rally the country around a clear and credible goal. The challenges are significant and the costs are high. But the stakes are too great to lose the support of the American people.” He sees why we cannot cut and run. What he doesn’t see, I fear, is the scope of the enemy represented in Iraq and looming in neighboring countries. The problem now, as Michael Ledeen has rightly insisted, is that you cannot deal with Iraq alone. Iran, in particular, is eager to intervene – and is meddling to prevent representative government from coming about in Iraq. We cannot challenge every regime at once, of course, but we do need to keep in mind that the conflict is regional, that other terror-masters are involved, and that stabilizing Iraq is the beginning, not the end, of a real strategy to roll back Islamist terror. I’m not sure that the president has fully embraced this analysis. But I am sure that Kerry hasn’t.

AND MORE: A heartening story of American Kurds thanking returning U.S. Soldiers. I’m also encouraged by the relatively mature way in which the West has responded to the hideous hostage-taking by various extremists in Iraq. This time, we seem to have taken this appalling tactic in stride and refused to accede to it in any way. Kudos to the Japanese in particular. I’m not saying, of course, that we shouldn’t be mortified by the cost to human life – and the families and friends of the captured. But I am saying that being able to withstand this attempted blackmail – and not succumb to media hype – will prevent further such kidnappings in the future. Maybe, in fact, al Jazeera has unwittingly helped us here. By broadcasting so much obvious propaganda on a daily basis, we are now inured to it, unshocked. Which means they lose.

My fisking of an egregious act of outing at the Washington Post.

DUPED BY THE ONION: An anti-gay group in Canada uses the Onion as a reliable source.

IN DEFENSE OF BUSH: Victor Davis Hanson makes an argument about how the current president has reversed over two decades of appeasement of Middle East terror. Money quote:

George W. Bush, impervious to such self-deception, has, in a mere two and a half years, reversed the perilous course of a quarter-century. Since September 11, he has removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, begun to challenge the Middle East through support for consensual government, isolated Yasser Arafat, pressured the Europeans on everything from anti-Semitism to their largesse to Hamas, removed American troops from Saudi Arabia, shut down fascistic Islamic “charities,” scattered al-Qaida, turned Pakistan from a de facto foe to a scrutinized neutral, rounded up terrorists in the United States, pressured Libya, Iran, and Pakistan to come clean on clandestine nuclear cheating, so far avoided another September 11 – and promises that he is not nearly done yet.

That record is far more impressive when you consider what came before him.

Here’s an email from a soldier I first corresponded with when he was a cadet at West Point. He’s legit – and his email is worth printing in full, I think. I’m not endorsing everything he says, but it’s worth hearing what a very bright and committed young soldier is going through right now:

Troop strength – I think we have consistently underestimated the number of troops it would take to pacify Iraq. Gen Shinseki’s original estimates were much closer to the mark. The fact that the 1st Armored Division (my unit) has now been extended for at least 4 months shows there aren’t enough troops – in order to deal with a fairly minor uprising we had to break the one-year-boots-on-ground pledge. If we had had a strategic reserve, this would not be necessary. However, the dirty secret is that there aren’t any more troops to be had – at least not the active-duty armor/infantry brigades and divisions requried to fight a tough enemy. Furthermore, the frenetic destruction that occured after the fall of Baghdad set us way back in terms of reconstruction – more troops could have limited if not prevented the extensive looting.

Sadir et al. – Although his uprising is seen as a ominious sign for the coalition, it does have an upside. His poorly trained and poorly equiped rag-bad militia is being chewed up by our army. His defeat and eventual marginalization will serve the coalition well. After one year of occupation, I think many Iraqis have come to see the army as rather toothless – we get blown up by roadside bombs or mortars and yet we continue to rebuild schools, enforce the laws, train police etc. Now because of Fallujah and what has been going on in Baghdad, our potency and resolve are on full display. My task force alone has killed many insurgents in the last two weeks – something that was not happening before. By confronting us in a conventional way, Sadir et al. are playing to our military strengths – and it isn’t going well for them.

Long term prospects – I have to admit that after one year here I am largely pessimistic. Iraqi society is sick in many ways. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Saddam was the problem or the symptom. I just don’t know how a society so divided along ethnic and tribal lines, with no democratic or liberal traditions and almost zero respect for the rule of law can build any kind of society accept and autocratic one. I’m not ashamed that the US came here with good intentions and noble sentiments about the universality of our values – democracy, liberty, the rule of law etc., but I think all our efforts might be eventually futile. In essence, we have given the Iraqis an enormous gift, but they don’t seem to be seizing the opportunity. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink…

The Army – Most soldiers in my unit were pretty demoralized by the extension. We were promised a one year tour and now that promise has been broken. Retention will certainly suffer. However, we are facing a difficult time in Iraq and our continued presence is necessary. What I would like to hear and I think most soldiers feel the same way – is for someone high up to say “Look, we didn’t plan for this. Things have gotten screwed up and we need your continued sacrifice. This is why it is so important you stay.” Instead we have gotten vague comments about “managing the troop redeployment” – as if it were some little snafu or inconvenience. The truth is, our division is now getting ready for another bloody and hellishly hot summer that none of us expected to ever go through again.

Good and bad. But it’s only one year.

The cease-fire and apparent retreat of al Sadr’s little army are both pieces of good news from Iraq. We are trying to hand over power to a new government; but the effective components of that government have long been hard to identify. Such leaders need to be competent and respected, as many in the Governing Council are. But they also have to represent real power bases; have followings they can deliver; have constituencies who will respect and listen to them. One by-product of the current violence is that leaders will have to emerge to represent the various factions; and with imagination and leadership, a new government can be nailed down. I’m with Mickey in believing that earlier elections – even by the not-terribly-reliable basis of ration-cards – would be preferable to later elections. Mickey’s key point:

An early election would make it clear to all Iraqis that any disruptive violence was not designed to drive out the occupying infidels but rather to disrupt the election campaign and prevent Iraqis from determining their own fate. An early election would give voice and power to the so-called “silent majority” of pro-moderation Iraqis that polls show exists, before continued occupation erodes more of their moderation.

That may be too clever, but its direction seems to me to be the right one. We need above all Shiite leadership to navigate a way past al Sadr to power. Sistani now has many cards and it does not hurt the coalition to defer to him. In fact, deferring to such leaders while reinforcing civil order is exactly what our strategy must be. We mst not get trapped into insisting that we run Iraq. We must remember that our goal is to give Iraq back to the Iraqis. If that means lowering our standards – and I do not mean as low as al Sadr – then lower them.

BUSH’S RESPONSIBILITY: It’s worth saying here what we now know the president got wrong – badly wrong. There were never enough troops to occupy Iraq. The war-plan might have been brilliant, but the post-war plan has obviously been a failure. We needed more force and we needed more money sooner. The president has no excuses for not adjusting more quickly to this fact: he was told beforehand; he was told afterward; but he and the Defense Secretary were too pig-headed to change course. I still favor the war; but I cannot excuse the lapses and failures of the administration in the post-war. Yes, this was always going to be very very hard. And yes, Iraq was slowly imploding under Saddam and some version of what we are now witnessing was inevitable – and, without the war, it would have happened without our stabilizing presence. Yes, balancing keeping order and winning hearts and minds is not an easy operation to pull off. But with the troop levels we maintained – especially given the limited international support – we made things far harder than they might have been, and our beleaguered troops are dealing with the aftermath. We can still win this. We must still win this. But the president is in part responsible for making it even harder than it might have been.

THE KIND OF LEADER WE NEED: Check out this interview with Wale Al-Rukadi, vice-secretary general of the-Council of Iraqi Tribes. He’s a moderate Shiite who sees what he needs to do. We have to pray there are more like him.

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: David Bernstein notices an ugly, but typical, statement in Iraq.

WHY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DOESN’T WORK: Anywhere in the world.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: With respect to the Lord’s Gym, a reader suggested something else:

Proposed design for Lord Gym’s restrooms:

LORD’s JOHN

Personal evacuation in a Christian setting. Pictures of John the Baptist micturating surround you, while gently suggestive Christian lyrics (“Where lie the waters gently flowing…” “With its crystal tide forever flowing…” “Lord, purge away my sin, from earthborn passions set me free and make me pure within…” “Roll away the stone, let it be, roll away the stone, and set me free…”) inspire you.

I hope I haven’t given them any ideas. More feedback you know where.

OFF TO MISSISSIPPI: I’m headed to the University of southern Mississippi today for a talk on the war. Then on to Palm Springs for the Log Cabin Republican Convention, where I’m giving a speech Friday lunchtime. Blogging will continue. Back Saturday.

“I spoke at length with my brother, who is a career, senior NCO in the Army. He just returned from Iraq this past month after a year of service in that theater. His views and opinions are decidedly mixed, if not pessimistic. With respect to the immediate situation, it is his view that we are doing now what should have been done in the first 60 days after Saddam’s fall: bringing the hammer down on those elements of Iraqi society unwilling to accept the change in regime. He feels, as do most military folks with whom I have either conversed or read, that we have an inadequate number of boots on the ground who are experienced in the type of warfare at hand (counter-insurgency; light infantry; urban warfare). In general, it is his observation that the US Army has become woefully overstretched in Iraq, Afghanistan, and with our other worldwide commitments (US Army’s troop strength is 40% of what it was 12 years ago).

Longterm, he is rather pessimistic regarding our efforts in Iraq. Although I do not agree with his pessimism, I do think he makes a credible argument for why our efforts to rationalize and democratize Iraq are likely to fail. First, there is no tradition whatsoever in Iraq for the rule of law (or at least none sense the time of Hammurabi). Second, Iraq is a state comprised, like Yugoslavia, of many disparate and often vengeful minded “nations” and “tribes.” Third, the whole society, despite its modern technological trappings, is still essentially organized around the tribal unit, which makes the development of a pluralistic and rational society extremely difficult. Although I have a much more optimistic view on this subject (at least in the longterm of the next two decades, assuming the US stays the course), I found his comments to be very sobering.

His most pessimistic views were reserved for the future of the US military, especially the Army and the reserve forces. The Army’s longterm morale appears to be at severe risk due to its being so overstretched. Re-enlistments by the very backbone of the Army (senior NCO’s and Officers) are going to start dropping like a rock unless the situation changes in the estimation of my brother. This is doubly the case with the Reservists, upon whom the military has become so dependent. In addition, our military personnel are terribly underpaid given the missions that they are called upon to fulfill during this wartime era. Many military families live at near subsistence level incomes, are required to make huge sacrifices in terms of risk to loved ones and constantly having to move, and struggle to make ends meet.

The harshest of his criticisms were reserved for Rumsfeld who obdurately and stubbornly has refused to even give any hearing to these concerns by the military. I got the impression that Rumsfeld is largely loathed by the brass and the rank and file in the Army, and probably in the other services as well.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

In striking contrast to the silence and inarticulacy by the president, prime minister Tony Blair led the way – once again – over the weekend in explaining why what is happening in Iraq is so crucial, and why keeping our nerve is so vital:

Of course [the terrorists] use Iraq. It is vital to them. As each attack brings about American attempts to restore order, so they then characterise it as American brutality. As each piece of chaos menaces the very path toward peace and democracy along which most Iraqis want to travel, they use it to try to make the coalition lose heart, and bring about the retreat that is the fanatics’ victory.
They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilisation and democracy everywhere. They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.

He’s been listening to the BBC and reading the Guardian. Look, I do not blame those who claim they opposed the war and so feel no reason to come up with proposals today to help us win this particular, crucial battle. But you can still appeal to their better side, to make the case that, regardless of how we got here, we still have an absolutely critical obligation to see it through. That’s why I’m waiting to see what John Kerry has to say. Forget every campaign ad. How he reacts to this current crisis is the single thing to keep in mind in considering him as the next president. Is he going to play partisan games? Or is he going to rise to the occasion, present himself as an alternative war leader and not someone who will find a way to delude Americans that they are not at war?

ON THE IRAQI MIDDLE: Blair also homes in on the silent majority in Iraq, who are watching these events with trepidation:

People in the West ask: why don’t they speak up, these standard-bearers of the new Iraq? Why don’t the Shia clerics denounce al-Sadr more strongly? I understand why the question is asked. But the answer is simple: they are worried. They remember 1991, when the West left them to their fate. They know their own street, unused to democratic debate, rife with every rumour, and know its volatility. They read the Western papers and hear its media. And they ask, as the terrorists do: have we the stomach to see it through?
I believe we do. And the rest of the world must hope that we do. None of this is to say we do not have to learn and listen. There is an agenda that could unite the majority of the world. It would be about pursuing terrorism and rogue states on the one hand and actively remedying the causes around which they flourish on the other: the Palestinian issue; poverty and development; democracy in the Middle East; dialogue between main religions.

There’s the synthesis that we need. The question this year is: which candidate can best provide it?

My take on Shelby Steele’s view of marriage, Al Franken’s new radio station, and John Kerry’s Iraq policy: they’re all now posted on the site.

WHAT IF …? George W Bush had attacked Afghanistan based on the August memo warning him about al Qaeda? Gregg Easterbrook has a must-read answer.

KERRYGATE?: Who tried to steal critical documents that prove that John Kerry was indeed at a Vietnam Veterans Against The War meeting, where assassinating pro-war senators was dicussed? Pro-Kerry allies trying to cover up an embarrassment, which Kerry has still not come clean about? Or Republicans trying to get the proof to nail him? The Daily Telegraph has what strikes me as an important story.