Category: Old Dish

Two new pieces suggest this new form of media is catching on. Here’s Time’s brief synopsis; and here’s Newsday’s more sophisticated take. One sign of our increasing impact is the 840 percent increase in Amazon sales of “Warrior Politics” yesterday and 225 percent increase today. It’s now Number 4.

MORRIS REINFORCES THE NEW CONSENSUS: In a piece today in the Wall Street Journal, Dick Morris doesn’t add that much that is new to the record of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy fecklessness. But he does finger Sandy Berger as the key operator in preventing a serious war on terror in the latter years of the Clinton administration. And he does serve to buttress again the growing sense that the Clinton era, for all its successes, was the end of something rather than the initiation of a new politics. This is what even some liberals are beginning to acknowledge is another part of what might be termed the transformational presidency of George W. Bush. As the contrast between pre-9/11 and post-9/11 culture deepens in the public consciousness, Bill Clinton seems forever a small and mildly regrettable incident from the distant past.

THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: A disturbing report in London’s Telegraph on the rabid, murderous anti-semitism of some British Muslims:

Mr Hamza, the imam of Finsbury Park mosque in north London, has been filmed urging young men to attack non-believers. “Crush his head in your arms, wring his throat, rip his intestines out . . . Forget wasting a bullet on them – cut them in half,” he said… Mr Faisal, a Jamaican-born cleric, preaches across Britain and sells recordings of his inflammatory sermons. In one he tells listeners: “How do you fight the Jews? You kill the Jews.”

Hmmm. Where have we heard statements like that before? (I should add that I’m appalled that in my homeland, such statements, however disgusting, have no First Amendment protection under the law.)

“‘What’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe? A canoe always tips.’ I wish I’d been there when the second most famous black man on earth delivered this joke at a charity banquet last year.” – Charlotte Raven, Britain’s most rabid anti-American, proving that prejudices tend to go together.

NEXT UP – HAMAS AS THE APOSTLES: “Ahmed Abdel Rahman, one of Mr. Arafat’s close advisers, said, ‘At this moment, Arafat is the Christ of the Palestinian people.'” – New York Times, yesterday.

The following are the only books on Amazon.com to beat our book-club choice for February yesterday evening at 9pm: John Grisham’s latest; a self-help book; a Stephen King TV series tie-in; and “Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm.” Then comes our little book – jammed with Churchill, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, Machiavelli and Montesquieu. I think we just single-handedly elevated the culture a little, don’t you, and I’m more than a little stunned. If you want to take part in this Internet experiment of a book club, check out the Book Club page which will tell you all you need to know. I started reading the book today, and will be posting my and then your first impressions February 18. Then the fun begins.

THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE: One Mona Eltahawy writes eloquently this morning in the Washington Post about the real issue behind the veiling of Afghan women. That issue is not the burqa itself, she argues, a piece of clothing that is in many places an integral part of indigenous social customs. The issue is the matter of choice: whether women can freely choose to wear such a piece of clothing or not. Eltahawy is on to something here. I find the burqa repulsive as a symbol of women’s oppression, marginalization and invisibility. But it’s a step too far to believe therefore that every burqa means that. And it further demeans the deeper autonomy of women to assume that some could not make that choice out of their own free will. A freely-chosen faith or custom, however abhorrent to outsiders, is not something good liberals should seek to reform or abolish. What good liberals should seek to abolish is the political tyranny that makes real choice for women such an impossibility in such cultures. That’s why feminists should be behind this war – and the war to liberate Iraq and Iran. Not because women will be freed of burqas, but because people will be freed from the tyranny that makes female dignity and equality impossible.

KRUGMAN UPS THE ANTE: Today’s column from Paul Krugman makes Paul Begala look positively non-partisan. There’s first a strained attempt at the most ambitious-yet Enron analogy. Krugman charges that “on the basis of surplus fantasies, the administration – aided by an audit committee, otherwise known as the U.S. Congress, that failed to exercise due diligence – gave itself a big bonus in the form of a huge tax cut.” Ergo, Congress is Arthur Andersen. Ergo, Bush is Enron. Q.E.D. But wait a minute. For this analogy to even begin to work, wouldn’t the tax cut have to have been applied only to the members of the administration? And wouldn’t the Congress, including many Democrats, have to have been complicit in that? And wouldn’t the tax-payers, like Enron’s shareholders, have been fleeced rather than reimbursed? You have to wonder if Krugman has so bought his own demagoguery that for a split second he almost believed that. Or is he just equating Ken Lay and George W. Bush anyhow, anyway, by any rhetorical means? Then there’s the extraordinary argument that the Bush administration has cynically used the tragedy of September 11 to add to its budget a “one-time charge” – an “accounting trick” worthy of Enron’s crooks. That “one-time charge,” you see, is the new defense budget! It’s a phony new charge, in Krugman’s view, made purely to cook the books to distract attention from Ken Lay-style embezzlement by the president. Think of that for a minute. Krugman is asserting that the Bush administration’s response to the terrorist attacks of last fall was not designed actually to protect us from danger or to defeat a real threat – but in order to preserve their malevolent fiscal agenda, aimed at their own enrichment. Our current war is therefore nothing less than a conscious, cynical attempt by Bush to rob the American tax-payer in order to shovel money at corporate defense contractors and the rich, regardless of the country’s military, fiscal or economic needs. I guess at least we now know what Krugman really thinks. He and Ramsey Clark and Noam Chomsky seem to have a huge amount now in common.

INSULTS, CONTINUED: Churchill has been a favorite of yours, especially the faint damnations of Clement Atlee. With Chamberlain, however, Churchill was just as funny but also deadly. One reader emails to remind me that Churchill once said of his predecessor as prime minister: “He looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.” And then he was able to take off the gloves completely, in analyzing Chamberlain’s character: “At the depths of that dusty soul there is nothing but abject surrender.” Brutal. But for sheer malevolent delight, it’s hard to beat Melville on Emerson: “I could readily see in Emerson, notwithstanding his merit, a gaping flaw. It was the insinuation that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions.” And all I can think of is Al Gore.

Number 6!

Our first book of the month is now Number 7 on the Amazon charts. You guys rock my world.

More evidence of the malevolence of the British and European press from the venerable BBC commentator, Alistair Cooke. Instapundit drew my attention to Cooke’s latest ‘Letter From America.’ Here’s the best part:

And as for the gusher of pious rage that sprang up from the dumb release of that wretched photograph of detainees shackled for a hazardous moment or two, I can only offer the first-hand testimony of a serious and respected British correspondent who’s just been done there. He says, frankly, that what he saw for years in the prisons of Northern Ireland made Guantanamo look like a Holiday Inn. He found the men well-fed, with hot Muslim meals apart from various snacks and candy bars. They enjoy hot showers, they write home, they have room to jump around in. Perhaps the Pentagon would make up for its dumb blunder by releasing a new, true photograph of the whole 158 detainees standing alongside the 161 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses assigned to them – 161 for 158 patients, a ration of personal medical care unknown I should think to prisoners anywhere or even I daresay to the English newspaper editors who are so outraged by the barbarity of American treatment.

I think this controversy is now formally closed.

The speech that president George W. Bush gave last Tuesday night was arguably the most significant foreign policy speech given by an American president since John F Kennedy swore to pay any price and bear any burden to fight and win the Cold War. It heralded in tone and substance, in resolve and clarity, a new war – as vital and as perilous as the Cold War, and with arguably just as much at stake. Europeans and others around the world keep misunderstanding this president’s message, misjudging his abilities and under-estimating his will. But notice has now been given. This war has only just begun…. [This article – my latest column for the Sunday Times of London – continues here.]

As more details emerge from Camp X-Ray, the hysteria of the British and foreign press about the alleged inhumanity and torture and evil going on there seems more and more naked anti-Americanism. Here’s Katharine Seelye’s piece in the New York Times this morning. She relates a story of how one 21 year-old terrorist is getting eye surgery for an ancient injury and has asked to have tea with his surgeon afterwards. They have a Muslim chaplain who has ordered large-print Korans for them and has prevented any further shaving. “I look into their soul to see what they want from me, and how I can help them spiritually,” Lieutenant Saifu-Islam, the chaplain, tells the Times. Seelye adds:

There have been 18 operations on six patients, including one amputation of a middle finger and a reconstruction of the hand. Most of the treatment is for infections from gunshot wounds, shrapnel and explosives. Doctors also said there have been two cases of psychological disorders, with one prisoner a manic- depressive and the other with post- traumatic stress syndrome. Both are being treated with medication.

Medication for mental illness? Chaplains? This is what the foreign press whipped up into a travesty of human rights? The transparency of the press’s motives is now unmissable. But I won’t be holding my breath for any apologies or corrections.

BOOK CLUB UPDATE: An amazing start. Our first book, “Warrior Politics,” by Robert Kaplan, has rocketed to Number 13 on the Amazon charts in one morning. Move over, Oprah. Join in now. All the details are on the new Book Club page.

SUPERBOWL SCHLOCK: A reader makes a good point about the odd spectacle of screaming rock fans and a full-screen obit for 9/11:

Just a thought on the uneasiness about the scroll of the dead of September 11th during the Super Bowl halftime show. At first, I was not only uneasy, I was disgusted. I thought it was a beautiful gesture to scroll these names, and then the crowd started cheering, and U2 egged them on. And then I was even more disgusted when they cut the list short. (around the late Cs if I recall) But then a friend of mine made a comment – The Super Bowl was THE target last night. If a terrorist could have attacked anywhere in the world, that would have been the crown jewel. And all of the thousands present knew that. Their cheering was a taunting, a recognition that the terrorists will not stop them from enjoying a game and a show, and a tribute, though not solemn, to the people who died. They cheered because they would not let the terrorists stop them. They cheered in spite of, not in support of, terror. Though I’m still a little uneasy on the whole idea of the scroll, that explanation made me feel a lot better about it.”

He has a point, doesn’t he?

GREAT INSULTS, CTD: “Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meatpacker, the morals of a money changer and the manner of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once-noble profession into an 8 percent security. May he rest in trust.” – William Allen White, editor of the Kansas City Star, on the man who first brought front-page advertising into newspapers.

If you’re like me, you regret from time to time not reading enough good, serious, stimulating books. You don’t seem to make enough space for reading in your life; you don’t have enough time for a real book club. At the same time, the absorption of daily news and commentary sometimes feels like a diet of fast-food without the perspective of deeper reading. So here’s an idea. This website is launching an online book club today. Each month, I’ll pick a book that is short, serious, and related to current events and we’ll read it together for three or four weeks. After a couple of weeks, I’ll write my first stream-of-consciousness review of the first part, and then you pitch in with emails, discussion and debate. I’ll keep reviewing and responding to your posted emails in a manner more like the Daily Dish than a formal book review. In the fourth week, we’ll get the author in to answer our questions and respond to criticism. I think it’s a relatively new way to use a new medium for a very ancient practice – thinking, reading and talking.

WARRIOR POLITICS: The first book I’ve chosen is Bob Kaplan’s “Warrior Politics.” It’s been on my to-read list for a while and it looks like a highly stimulating argument for our current predicament. (It could be awful, of course, but that’s what we’re going to discover and argue about). If you feel like analyzing the current war on terror with input from Churchill, Machiavelli, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu and others, all of whom are cited in the book, then this is a project you should enjoy. If you miss the intellectual stimulation of your college days, give it a try. You’ll find all the details on the new Book Club page. There’s an extra bonus from our point of view: If you buy the book directly from the page, you’ll also help fund the site – since we get 15 percent of the net price. If the idea works – which is partly up to you – we may also have stumbled on a way to make web-journalism like this pay for itself without my begging for $50,000 “consulting” fees from Enron. So give it a try. You’ve got two weeks to get the book, and read the first couple of chapters before I kick off the discussion on February 18. See you there!

THE SUPERBOWL AT WAR: The culture surely has changed, hasn’t it? Last night’s football spectacle wasn’t just a great game, it was a picture of a culture in transition. The military graphics, the spots made by players for the troops, the satellite images from Afghanistan, the Budweiser ads, the Britney Americana: it was a testosterone-filled wartime pep rally as much as a game. I was particularly transfixed by U2’s performance. This is a group not known for its conservative politics – but they showed that a liberal politics is completely consistent (or should be) with a hatred of terrorism, a deep patriotism, and a love of what America stands for. I choked up a little. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable at the sight of cheering, grinning pop-fans going wild beneath a huge graphic detailing the names of those killed by the terrorist murderers of September 11. The tone was off, don’t you think? But then, I guess, cultures in transition will likely have their fair share of incongruous moments. Is patriotism possible without occasional vulgarity? In the real world, probably not. But one can dream.

THE COWARDICE OF KEN LAY: After the sickening spectacle of his wife going on network television to describe herself as a victim of the Enron scandal, Kenneth Lay has the gall to withdraw from testifying before Congress. He’s appalled that some members of Congress have reacted to a report on Enron’s structure and organization by inferring that the company was a criminal racket. The impertinence of these mere Congressmen and Senators! Of course, Lay has a Constitutional right to withdraw. I also have a Constitutional right to say his inability to recognize the scale of the damage he has done to our entire capitalist system is contemptible.

THE SPLUTTERING OF OPPOSITION: The incoherence of the opposition to the war against terrorism has only deepened with time. Two of the most intelligent liberal critics of Bush’s foreign policy, Hugo Young of the left-liberal Guardian, and Bob Wright of the liberal magazine Slate, have just produced columns in response to the State of the Union that seem beyond weak to me. Wright makes what he doubtless thinks is a brilliant point by saying of Bush’s ultimatum to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, “[I]f we are one way or another going to strip the world’s three menacing “rogue states” of any weapons of mass destruction-then why will we still need missile defense in the end?” Duh. Maybe we won’t succeed with all three. Maybe others will emerge to take their place. It turns out that this is Wright’s only substantive complaint about the speech. He sticks to his odd view that we either have to fight terrorism or tackle the threat from rogue states. Why not both? He argues that there is no inherent connection between Iran, Iraq and North Korea. But what about their development of weapons of mass destruction? And in a world where terrorists can easily co-operate with such states, why should we not tackle the entire nexus rather than its constituent parts? Beats me. Then Bob echoes Young’s complaint that we should always be consulting with the allies. Well, aren’t we? Who’s peace-keeping in Kabul right now? What this consultation usually means is asking the French what they’d do and taking their advice. The right kind of multilateralism is taking a lead and inviting others to join and follow. That variety won the Cold War. Why won’t it win this one? The phony multilateral argument is made even phonier by a very good point made by Tom Friedman yesterday. What happens when your allies are so militarily weak or incompetent or archaic that their aid is virtually useless? I guess Young and Wright would prefer more blather to keep the allies happy. I prefer Bush’s straight talk.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER: The always-sharp Ryan Lizza of the New Republic comes up with the canniest assessment yet of Bush’s State of the Union. He sees how Bush’s domestic agenda has been designed in part to divide the Democrats: “A defense buildup. Deficit-spending. The dominance of national security. Welfare. The return of hard-hat Republicans. The year 2002 is starting to look like an enormous problem for the Democrats.” Lizza thinks the Democrats can counter and very smartly analyses the role of Enron in any coherent counter-attack. But the prospects look bleak. I’m beginning to think that we could see a Republican House and Senate next year.

EPIPHANY WATCH: This Brown university senior gets it about the new era and the true Clinton legacy. My favorite passage:

“If Clinton was a womanizer (the “if” is probably unnecessary) then I am a woman. He got me. He made me think that this country’s welfare was based on our sky-high stock market prices. He took me out to dinner, paid for everything, and told me that I had beautiful eyes. I was a fool not to notice the mischief going o
n beneath the table. We were all taken in by Clinton. Year after year, he gave the most boring, detailed, laundry-list State of the Union addresses, and yet we clung to his every word. We scoffed at critics such as John McCain, who rightly stated that Clinton conducted a “photo-op foreign policy.” We collectively stared into his eyes while terrorist camps were being armed in Afghanistan.”

A new generation is being born. A canny liberal commentator, Brendan Nyhan, also gets the sheer scope of what’s now going on in our politics and sees it presaged in the State of the Union:

“On its own, [Bush’s point] may seem obvious — America was self-indulgent in the 1990s, we did fail to take the threats against us seriously, and the war on terrorism is incredibly important. But just as Reagan broke from and stigmatized old-style liberalism, Bush can now frame Democratic opposition as representative of a discredited, Clintonian past. Call it “changing the tone” squared. Concerns about missile defense, civil liberties or the wisdom of overthrowing rogue regimes like Iraq can be portrayed as dangerous and self-indulgent, the echoes of a dying era.”

GREAT INSULTS, CTD: I’m still getting email with some classic vituperation from the past. Here’s H.L. Mencken’s 1926 obituary of William Jennings Bryan:

“This talk of [Bryan’s] sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity. He was a peasant come home to the barnyard. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything he was not. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition — the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising those half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine.”

Keep ’em coming.

THE TORIES’ BIG TENT: A key Tory, former foreign affairs spokesman, Frances Maude, endorses the inclusion of gay people into the Conservative tent: “We have to be a party that credibly and genuinely seeks to represent everybody in the country and respects everybody, regardless of what side of the tracks they are from, their gender, sexual orientation, colour, origins or anything. We have got to be a party that is seen to be generous and broad and not narrow.” How long will it be before an administration official includes sexual orientation as a non-issue in Republican politics?

“When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.” – Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, today.