Category: Old Dish

“Our ability to create democracy, an extraordinarily evolved and delicate balance of political, social, economic and cultural forces that represents several hundred years of Atlanticist European development, is about as great as the ability of your Apple tech support phone rep to teach you in ten minutes how to create your own operating system.
Why do we retain such illusions? I suppose we’re prisoners of our extraordinary success with Germany and Japan. What we forget is that each of those countries was utterly, brutally destroyed by its conquerors – in Germany’s case, nearly an entire generation of young German women was raped and millions of other German civilians were killed (read R. Conquest’s latest book on the former); and of course, we nuked Japan. The establishment of democracy in these two postwar regimes was a bizarre fluke that has not been and will not be repeated. If even Argentina can descend so rapidly into economic and political chaos, then what chance is there that Iraq, Iran, Saudi or Syria will become both orderly and democratic in our lifetimes?
Fess up, Andrew: would you bet a substantial sum of your retirement funds on such an unlikely outcome? If not, then why on earth should this nation’s policy be predicated on this longshot of all longshots?” – Just one of many stimulating letters in the Book Club today. Don’t miss it. Ledeen will respond again Monday.

As usual, a really sharp comment from Virginia Postrel on Gore’s speech. She cites the passage where Gore says

that we ought to be focusing our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it … I don’t think we should allow anything to diminish our focus on the necessity for avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists that we know were responsible for it. [Emphasis added.]

Virginia comments:

This is a very interesting way of framing the task at hand: not to prevent future attacks on Americans but to avenge the deaths on September 11. Now there’s no question that many Americans, myself included, have entertained the desire for vengeance. But the only reason to act on that impulse is to make it clear that future attacks will be costly for the attackers. Vengeance for vengeance’s sake is just blood lust. It might feel good, but (leaving aside any humanitarian considerations) it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Vengeance may even make matters worse, by escalating blood feuds without eliminating threats. Gore’s pooh-poohing of the administration’s Iraq policy depends in large measure on his definition of the problem. If you want to prevent further attacks, you have to worry about state-sponsored weapons programs. If you just want to get revenge, you don’t.

I think that’s a brilliant insight. In his pathetic attempt to find a way to attack his nemesis, Gore has actually reverted to the kind of bellicose hysteria we usually associate with the far right. In fact, I think Gore’s speech is essentially what happens when a man takes his emotion and tries to find reasons – any reasons – for it. If the Democrats follow him, it will be into a political wilderness.

THE ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACK IN L.A.: More results from AS.com. My reference to an anti-Semitic assault in West Hollywood finally got a report in the L.A. Times and now the Forward. The Forward adds some new details:

Jimmy Delshad, an Iranian Jew and former president of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, which has many Iranian Jewish members, said the two communities have enjoyed a warm relationship. Even so, some Iranian Muslim youngsters have lately fallen under the influence of “Palestinian-like propaganda, which makes Jews responsible for everything,” he said. “Youth – especially at universities, who are very much against Israel and Jews – are very influenced and take things upon themselves,” said Delshad, who added that he believes these misguided youth were not targeting Iranian Jews specifically, but Jews in general.

My italics. Notice how our universities are now becoming incubators for anti-Semitic hate. Another triumph for the pomo-Left.

“A MENACE TO ITSELF AND TO MANKIND”: The Carnegie Endowment’s Anatol Lieven laments the emergence of a radical right-wing clique in combination with a moronic and solipsistic electorate to make America a threat to peace and democracy everywhere. If you want to read an unfettered and clarifying account of what many on the Left now believe, check out his essay in the current London Review of Books. Here’s his equation of today’s Americans with the war-frenzied Germans on the eve of the First World War:

[T]he intense solipsism of [the American] people, its general ignorance of the world beyond America’s shores, coupled with the effects of 11 September, have left tremendous political spaces in which groups possessed by the fantasies and ambitions sketched out here can seek their objectives. Or to put it another way: the great majority of the American people are not nearly as militarist, imperialist or aggressive as their German equivalents in 1914; but most German people in 1914 would at least have been able to find France on a map.

At some point, I’d better get a deeper understanding of why some find American power so deeply deeply frightening. Even to the extent that they’d prefer to uphold the tyranny in Iraq than invoke the forces that could end it. I don’t get it; and perhaps I never will.

WHO ARE YOU CALLING POODLE? An irate reader objects to Tony Blair’s being compared to a certain breed of dog:

While I enjoy the rhetoric – “So-and-so is someone’s poodle” – my poodle, black, seventy pounds and large of fang, is not amused. He asked me to inform you of all the domestic dogs, poodles are the closest to wolves by DNA analysis.

Point taken, ok?

Not long after my item on the “conservative” Christopher Hitchens, AP sent this correction out to their subscribers (thanks to a journalist reader):

The Nation-Columnist, 1st Ld-Writethru, a0596,0450
Christopher Hitchens, longtime columnist for The Nation, announces his
departure
Eds: SUBS 1st graf to CORRECT description to ‘maverick’ sted ‘conservative’;

Ah, that term “maverick.” I think it means: “We don’t have a clue, but this seems safe.” The correction arrived at 1.45 pm. I had a cow at 12.42 pm. Ah, the blogosphere!

Revealing quote from Eric Alterman about the role of a political journalist:

“Whether you are on the right or the left, it’s all about who your friends are and with whom you feel comfortable,” Mr. Alterman said. “Christopher [Hitchens] had long ago ceased to feel comfortable with his friends on the left.”

You know what, Eric? That’s exactly what it’s not about. It’s about writing what you believe in, regardless of your friends and enemies, regardless of your social life and professional contacts. Which is why the output of Hitchens and Alterman are not even comparable.

The Associated Press reports the following:

N E W Y O R K, Sept. 26 – Christopher Hitchens, longtime conservative columnist for The Nation, is leaving the liberal weekly publication.

Huh? Just because a man backs a war against Islamo-fascism and found president Clinton to be one of the most shameful liars and hypocrites in American history, he’s a conservative? Hitch’s liberal credentials are so voluminous, his hostility to Toryism so profound, his independence so tenaciously guarded that this hardly bears refutation. But it does cast light on the morons who now work as journalists for the A.P. (And, by the way, the notion that the Nation is liberal is also dumb. It’s a leftist rag, devoted to undermining liberal institutions, free trade, free speech on campus, a defense of the free West against Islamism, and still has whiffs of regret for the passing of the Soviet Union. Liberal? Get a grip. Hitch has more liberalism in his forelock than the Nation has in its entirety.)

It’s not just Hitch who’s breaking with some elements of the left. Here’s an email I just got from a former key ACT-UPer:

I have always described myself as a liberal or progressive. I am a gay man living in Manhattan, I am pro-choice, a registered Democrat and have been active in gay organizations from ACT UP to HRCF. However since 9/11 I find myself growing more and more estranged from the left. They just seem clueless and adrift, bitter and angry. The immediate reaction of some on the left to 9/11 was appalling. The creeping anti-Semitism of the left is especially shocking and hypocritical. This one question of the Middle East has led me to examine all my left leaning beliefs. And I am not alone particularly here in New York. People who would normally be described as left are taking tentative steps in the same direction-rightward. We feel guilty about it and are afraid to discuss our new found politics with our friends. Indeed one friend who describes himself as a dedicated Marxist(read hypocrite) has written me off. My old ACT UP friends, with whom I have been arrested, are shocked at my center right views. My response is that ACT UP was actually founded on very conservative libertarian principles. At times it was even reactionary and dispalyed some facist tendencies. Nowadays you can find me reading downloaded and printed articles from National Review, Weekly Standard and,. happily, Slate at my favorite cafes in Manhattan. I still am a little embarrassed if anyone were to look over my shoulder and see me reading these publications but I am ready for any pithy comment that may come my way.

“[B]itterness is not a policy position. In past moments of foreign policy decision – first the Gulf war, then Bosnia – Al Gore has championed the moral and strategic necessity of American power and thus offered a model for his party. We wish we could say that at this moment of decision he was doing the same.” – The New Republic, in its current editorial. This is another great lede, measured, detailed, and all the more damning for that. Anyone who works for a political magazine will have stresses and strains, as Christopher Hitchens has with the Nation. But every now and again, you’re reminded (or not) of why you care about a particular institution. TNR’s intellectually honest criticism of Gore is a tribute to their integrity. I’m proud to be on their masthead.

This concept is a slippery one, so perhaps it’s worth examining its various possible meanings. The most obvious way to gain political advantage from a successful war is timing it to coincide with elections. I don’t see how the Bush administration can be plausibly said to have done this. The most obvious reason for the timing of this war has been the need to replenish materiel after Afghanistan and to go through the diplomatic motions to legitimize the enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Saddam. Even so, there will be no war until after the elections, and until the military conditions for victory are about as perfect as they can be. The second meaning, I suppose, is that the administration has shifted the public debate to Iraq in the run-up to elections. But here too, I think, it’s a bum rap. Andy Card’s crass remark that the war was a “new product” timed for a new season is the single best evidence of this. But it’s also clear, isn’t it, that some kind of pre-election debate on continuing the war on terror was inevitable, and the Democrats and anti-war liberals were among the first demanding that such a debate take place. I think they’re right. But they can’t have it both ways. Here’s a paragraph from today’s Washington Post:

More than a dozen Democrats, who requested anonymity, have told The Washington Post that many members who oppose the president’s strategy to confront Iraq are going to nonetheless support it because they fear a backlash from voters. A top party strategist said every House Democrat who faces a tough reelection this fall plans to vote for the Bush resolution. Senate Democrats are so concerned that Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (Minn.) could lose his seat because he will likely vote against the Bush resolution that they are drafting an alternative resolution “because he has to have something to give him cover,” a Democratic Senate aide said.

And these are the people accusing president Bush of putting politics before national security!

DASCHLE’S COMPLAINT: But what about Tom Daschle’s specific complaint? What Daschle had a herd of cows about is the following statement by Bush:

The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president and future presidents to better keep the American people secure.

What the president is talking about is whether the new homeland defense bureaucracy will be unionized. He’s clearly trying to pressure the Democrats to change their position, which would limit the ability of the new security organization to fire incompetent workers if need be. The Dems are prepared to hold up the legislation until the unions are satisfied. I think it’s unfair to infer from that that the Dems are “not interested” in security, which is where Daschle has a point, and the president went over the line. But I don’t think this extends to the notion that the president is politicizing the war as such. If the Dems take positions that the president believes are impeding national security in wartime, he has a duty to say so. That’s not politicization. It’s politics. In fact, it’s slightly creepy to believe that debating questions of war policy – how to attack Iraq, how to handle post-Taliban Afghanistan, how to set up domestic security, and so on – should somehow be sealed off in a lock-box of non-partisanship.

THE REAL ISSUE: No, the deeper issue that Daschle is responding to, methinks, is Gore’s speech. What Gore has done is galvanize the peacenik wing of the Democrats, undermining Daschle’s leadership, and pushing Daschle into a corner. If Daschle now goes along with the president, he’ll be called a poodle by the left. If he balks, he risks the Democrats becoming associated once again in the public mind with vacillation in matters of national defense. He’s trapped, and when pushed by Bush and Gore at the same time, he exploded. I think he also realizes that his entire strategy to keep the Senate and win back the House is in trouble. He decided early on me-too-ism, so as to return the debate to less troublesome matters like free pills for seniors. But this didn’t work, as the war debate kept going and going despite his best efforts. What the Republicans are dreaming of is a November election between peacenik Dems and warrior Republicans. In the run-up, Bush talks about national security, while the Democrats whine about politicizing the war. Bush talks about international substance; the Dems talk about domestic process. On those grounds, the GOP wins in November. Daschle, it seems to me, has just increased the odds of that happening.

THE GREENSPAN-BLAIR ALLIANCE: In London, Alan Greenspan implied he was against Britain joining the euro. And there was another revealing tidbit about his relationship with Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor:

It was unknown how close Mr Brown and his staff are to Mr Greenspan. Yesterday, Mr Brown described him as “a good friend” and “a great American, America’s greatest central banker, not just of our generation but of all time, and one of the world’s most esteemed statesmen”. He said Mr Greenspan had secretly helped him plan to make the Bank of England independent. Before the 1997 election, Mr Brown and his economic adviser, Ed Balls, visited Mr Greenspan several times.

Did Clinton know, I wonder?

NICOTINE VERSUS ALZHEIMERS: Hey guys, get smoking! You’ll die quicker – and with better brain functioning.

PURITANISM COMES HOME: The war against smokers comes to Boston.

NOW, CANADA: What timing the Dems have. As soon as they start looking as if they’re anti-war, even the Canadians come on board.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I should take up smoking … because every time I finish having sex, I have to read your weblog.” Glad to oblige, bro.

THE OLD CHESTNUT: “Finally, there’s that old chestnut “our values must be spread solely by suasion.” Not. The greatest instrument for the spread of democracy in the 20th century was the American Army, and in the Middle East today the spread of democracy is intimately linked to the success of the war. It is almost as if belief in Western values depends on the success of Western arms. Does that sound familiar? It’s a variation of the “God is on our side” doctrine. The outcome of struggle shows which side God is on. Maybe we modern acculturated intellectuals don’t believe it, but the peoples of the Middle East – if you must, call it “the street” – mostly do believe it. And so if you want to spread our values, you’ve gotta win the war.” – Michael Ledeen, responding to your criticisms on the Book Club page today. More emails will be posted this afternoon.

According to Josh Marshall. Now there really is no reason to read it any more.

For those who despair of the Democrats on national security, there’s always John Edwards. Here’s his recent statement on Iraq:

[T]he terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam’s arsenal, and there is every possibility that he could turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11th had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat, and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror.

He’s both right and politically savvy – the unGore. Which, presumably, is a deliberate choice. (The same goes for Joe Lieberman, who’s just been given a whopping big excuse to dump his deference to Gore in the primary stakes.

MORE SMOKING FOR HEALTH STORIES: I’m no doctor and can’t vouch for these anecdotes, but they strike me as worth investigating, if only because they show that smoking cigarettes – though obviously harmful in almost all cases – is not invariably so. Here’s one:

For people with a genetic predisposition to Parkinson’s disease, smoking has also been found to have protective capabilities by inhibiting the production of the MAO-B enzyme and thus preventing it from prematurely breaking down the neurotransmitter dopamine which, at chronically low levels, leads to Parkinson’s disease. Since dopamine slows down the transmission of nerve impulses and coordinates muscle movement, a shortage of dopamine can cause an unregulated and heavy traffic of electrical signals in the brain and can over-excite the muscles and cuase them to spasm and lock.

And here’s another:

My Dad developed ulcerative colitis (related to Crohn’s), Wound up in the hospital for 2 weeks. A couple of days before they were going to removed his colon, we found some obscure study on the net indicating that nicotine was related to the problem. We insisted that the Doctor prescribe the patch. Dad was out of the hospital in 2 days………with his colon intact. Some have come to call Ulcerative Colitis the “non-smokers” disease, because smokers never get it. My father had quit smoking 5 years prior to his illness.