Category: Old Dish

Desperate times call for desperate measures but Democratic party loyalist, Tim Noah, comes through! Watching Tim find some kind of internal consistency in Gore’s positions is like watching someone try to thread a needle on the Acela Express. But he gets points for trying. (Here’s an issue worth dissecting apart from Gore’s sophistry: what are the reasons for Gore’s belief that it’s impossible to fight both al Qaeda and Saddam? The military doesn’t seem to agree. So what are the actual arguments rather than the bogus ones anti-war Democrats want to flaunt to avoid the obvious inference that they don’t like the war on terror and want to stop it as soon as possible?)

I didn’t know this about smoking, and it seems worth airing. From a reader:

Here’s something that many doctors (and patients) know about, but I have yet to see it in the media…tobacco reduces intestinal inflammation associated with Crohns Disease. My stepmother has been a Crohns patient for, oh, 50 years. In recent years, she has tried without success to quit her longtime smoking habit, but every time – even with the patch and the gun – her Crohns flares up (abdominal cramps and other nasty things). Finally, she learned that nicotine, especially when delivered via a cigarette, is an effective anti-inflammatory. This has nothing to do with the fact that she’s smoked for 50 years; Crohns patients who have never smoked in their lives enjoy a benefit from smoking. Okay, so what else is new? Feds notwithstanding, many sick people claim relief from toquing up; why not lowly nicotine? My stepmother – who remains in generally good health despite the Crohns – still tries to wean herself from this habit. God knows society would rather see her sick than smoking.

I say legalize medical tobacco now! (It is legal, dummy – ed.) I know, but if Hillary has her way …

Henry Hanks supplies these two classic Gore quotes:

I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop.

That was 1991. Then there’s this week:

Now, back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, groups that we had, after all, encouraged to rise up against Saddam.

Mike Kelly has his number.

Ten minutes on the phone to Apple (an amazing guy in tech support called Jonathan) and I’m back. Don’t ask me what happened. But it’s better now. The support staff was excellent, and my Mac-love continues.

It won’t satisfy the appeasers, but it sure scares the hell out of me. Blair puts it best: “Read it all and again I defy anyone to say that this cruel and sadistic dictator should be allowed to get his hands on nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” Why don’t the Democrats have a leader of similar guts and stature?

ALL IMPERIALISTS NOW?: The Book Club discussion of Michael Ledeen’s “War Against The Terror Masters,” continues today. Michael will respond to your comments tomorrow.

I’ve noticed recently a rhetorical device employed by “news analysts,” like Patrick Tyler of the New York Times, to spin the news their way. That’s the use of the term “many.” Take this sentence in Tyler’s “news analysis” of the British government’s damning dossier of Saddam’s evasion of U.N. resolutions aimed at restricting his nuclear, chemical and biological offensive capability:

Although many Americans, and far more Europeans, will not see this as adequate cause to go to war – if President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair choose that option – the report appears clearly intended to make a strong case for the urgent return of inspectors to Iraq and for the necessary pressure to force Iraqi cooperation with their work.

This is clearly factually accurate, but it’s also misleading. According to current polls, around 70 percent of Americans find Saddam’s weaponry a threat to themselves and to the region – enough to support a war if necessary to disarm him. Does 30 percent constitute “many”? Sure. But wouldn’t it be more accurate to say: “Although a minority of Americans – but a majority of Europeans – will not see this as adequate cause to go to war …”? Nice try, Tyler. But we’re onto you.

Well, I guess it had to happen sometime. It made some weird whirring sounds then kaput. Amazingly, in this tiny town, there’s a full-time Mac repair specialist who’s coming over tomorrow morning to fix it. I’m writing this at a friend’s house, and it would be a little rude to stay here till 2 am, as is my wont, so I’m outta here soon. I’ll try and post a couple of items, but check in later for more.

This is news. Newly elected German chancellors invariably go to Paris for their first foreign trip. Schroder has gone to London. On the day that the Blair government has further seized the initiative with its damning report on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Britain is slowly becoming the pivot for the post-9/11 diplomatic world. One thing seems clear to me: the notion of a single European foreign policy is now well and truly dead.

Well, they don’t exactly say he’s not being cynical. They just say he isn’t as cynical as the other Democrats in Congress. As president Clinton once said, “That’s goooooood.” Who’s writing this new blog anyway? Rising star Noam Scheiber? Whoever it is, s/he’s a natural. Welcome to blogland, my fellow hacks.

I wonder what Al Gore’s champions in the 2000 race who belong to the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic party must think now. Gore unveiled himself in the 2000 campaign as a left-liberal on domestic matters – favoring race-baiting, corporation-bashing and pseudo-populism. But his neo-liberal supporters still supported him. They argued that he was still a foreign policy hawk, that he favored strong American action in the Balkans, that he backed the first Gulf War, that he was pro-Israel to the core. Now we know he was faking that as well. His comments on the war do not surprise me. They don’t make Gore an isolationist, or a reluctant warrior on terror, or any other kind of ideologue. They just show that he is a pure opportunist, with no consistency in his political views on foreign or domestic policy. He’ll say whatever he thinks will get him power or attention or votes. How else to explain his sudden U-turn on Iraq? Two years ago, he was demanding that Saddam must go. Seven months ago, he was calling for a “final reckoning” with Iraq, a state that was a “virulent threat in a class by itself.” Now, with Saddam far closer to weapons of mass destruction, Gore is happy to see Saddam stay in place. Even the New York Times, in a piece written to soften the hard edges of Gore’s attack on Bush, conceded that “his appearance here suggested a shift in positioning by Mr. Gore, who has for 10 years portrayed himself as a moderate, particularly when it comes to issues of foreign policy.” You can say that again.

COALITION CANT: In the text of the speech, I am unable to find any constructive suggestion made by Gore as to how to tackle Saddam’s threats. All he does is reiterate the idea that we need an international coalition, and that we need to be committed to Iraq after the war is over. Well: duh. Did he know of Condi Rice’s recent commitment to democracy in a post-war Iraq? As to the coalition argument, Gore, of course, spent eight years assembling a wonderful international coalition on Iraq, which agreed enthusiastically to do nothing effective at all. Now he wants us to wait even further, claiming that the administration has abandoned Afghanistan, while vast sums of U.S. money are being expended on rebuilding the country. And then he reiterates the bizarre notion that undermining one of the chief sponsors of terrorism in the world will somehow hurt the war against terrorism. Huh? Perhaps his lamest line was accusing the administration of dividing the country by hewing to a foreign policy of the “far right.” In fact, of course, Bush is merely seeking to enforce the U.N. resolutions the Clinton-Gore administration allowed to become a mockery. And most Americans back him.

DESTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT: But, as befitting a man whose administration slept while al Qaeda’s threat grew, Gore seems more concerned with what Germany and France think than with any threat to this country or elsewhere from Saddam’s potential nukes and poison gas. He says we now live in a “reign of fear.” Because of the continuing threat of terrorism? Because of Saddam’s nukes? Nope. Because of the Bush administration, a statement of moral equivalence that I’m genuinely shocked to hear from his lips. (He also slipped in a sly analogy to the Soviet Union’s “pre-emptive” invasion of Afghanistan. So Gore thinks Bush is the equivalent of the Soviet Union?) He says we have “squandered” the good will generated by the attacks of September 11. Really? A liberated Afghanistan, where women can now learn to read, where a fledgling free society is taking shape? No major successful terrorist attack on the homeland since the anthrax attacks of last fall? Growing support among Arab nations and at the U.N. for enforcing U.N. resolutions that Gore’s own administration let languish? Signs that Arafat may soon be sidelined on the West Bank? Squandered? The only thing that’s been truly squandered is what’s left of Gore’s integrity. At least Lieberman has been consistent. I must say, as a former Gore-supporter who was appalled by his campaign lurch to the left, that there are few judgment calls I’m prouder of than having picked Bush over Gore two years ago. Now I’m beginning to think we dodged a major catastrophe in world events.

BOOK CLUB: The first installment of our discussion of Michael Ledeen’s “War Against The Terror-Masters” begins today. Why Iraq before Iran is my opening salvo. Send in your emails to join the debate.

THE REAL DIVERSIONS: In the last week or so, a new slurry of phony arguments has emerged against the war with Iraq. The increasingly unhinged MoDo just asserted that a war against Iraq is actually a function of a “culture war” that Rumsfeld and Cheney are engineering to get back at their Vietnam era peacenik peers. Paul Krugman today takes up what’s left of his column (once he’s addressed the errors he’s made in other recent columns) to another argument. “In the end, 19th-century imperialism was a diversion,” he writes. “It’s hard not to suspect that the Bush doctrine is also a diversion – a diversion from the real issues of dysfunctional security agencies, a sinking economy, a devastated budget and a tattered relationship with our allies.” Leave aside these weird and cynical accusations for a second. What’s amazing about Krugman and Dowd and others is how uninterested they are in the actual matter at hand. Does Saddam Hussein have or is he close to having weapons of mass destruction? And if he is close to gaining them, what should we do about it? As David Brooks has pointed out with regard to the anti-war movement as a whole, to write about the budget or the culture war or “imperialism” without addressing this basic question is simply an abdication of seriousness. (Well, I guess Dowd left that aspiration behind years ago.) These commentators are constantly claiming that the Bush administration is using the war as a diversion. But in fact, it is these anti-war types who are engaging in a desperate series of diversions, distractions, irrelevancies, smears and fantasies in order to avoid the grave matter in front of us. When, one wonders, will they grow up?

DERSHOWITZ VERSUS HANSON: A telling campus fight is brewing over the attempt to divest Harvard from Israel. Alan Dershowitz calls on the master of Winthrop House to debate him. Check out his Crimson op-ed.

AT LAST: Some good news: chest hair is back.