Category: Old Dish

We’re in an end-game here, aren’t we? However you feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems clear to me that Yassir Arafat is perilously close to being irrelevant. He can’t deliver peace, as we found out at Camp David. He can’t deliver even a semblance of order in the Palestinian territories, let alone Israel. So what use is he as an interlocutor or even protagonist in the bloody conflict? This piece in the Washington Post is as gloomy as it is hard-headed. Even Colin Powell is apparently refusing to lecture the Israelis on what they should do next. Here’s my prediction: a brutal finale that re-establishes some semblance of order in Israel and on the West Bank at the cost of even greater Palestinian bitterness and further conflict. Who’s responsible? Ultimately the majority of Palestinians who still cannot reconcile themselves to a viable Zionist entity in Palestine. They’d rather suffer and die and be pummeled than concede Israel’s right to exist. The tragedy is ultimately theirs’.

MY SWEET BEATLE: Here’s a nicely arch paragraph from Philip Norman’s biography of the Fab Four about their first encounter with the Maharishi Yogi: “Amid the small audience of the faithful, four Beatles garbed as flower power aristocrats listened while a little Asian gentleman, wearing robes and a gray-tipped beard, described in his high-pitched voice, interspersed with many mirthful cachinnations, an existence both more inviting and more convenient than mere hippydom. The ‘inner peace’ which the Maharishi promised, and which seemed so alluring to pleasure-exhausted multimillionaires–not to mention the “sublime consciousness” so attractive to inveterate novelty seekers–could be obtained even within their perilously small span of concentration. To be spiritually regenerated, they were told, they need meditate for only half an hour each day.” Okay, so that’s a bit mean. It’s a little easy to condescend to Harrison’s eastern-influenced spirituality and Steve Waldman does a decent job on Beliefnet.com of explaining why. Seeking the presence of God is not at its core an intellectual exercise; what Harrison looked for in the 1960s was a practice of belief, that could lead to the experience of belief. Pascal explained this best – and I think most post-Vatican II Catholics who long for the ritual robbed from us have yearnings for something like Eastern meditation. Like Harrison, I believe such practices can at some point lead to a kind of spiritual calm – which is why I had a pretty intense Buddhist phase in my 20s, which had me disappearing into temples in Burma at one point. I even believe, as Harrison bravely confessed, that some types of recreational drugs can help elevate the consciousness artificially to give you a glimpse of what a higher state of being feels or looks like. If that leads to a deeper sense of the divine, then no one should scorn it, let alone make it illegal.

CONSERVATIVES AND HIPPIES: Besides, conservatives who deride “hippies” are missing something, I think. They’re missing the inherent weirdness and experimentalism of true religion. It should surely be possible to affirm a stringent conservative politics, while leaving space in civil society for all types of experimental religious practices – especially those that do not adhere to the exigencies of fundamentalism. In fact, one of the reasons to affirm the principle of a limited but active government is to create the safe social space for all types of experimental living that over-weaning government crowds out. To paraphrase Oakeshott, I’m a conservative in politics so that I might be a radical in many other human activities. It’s sad that so few contemporary liberals or conservatives understand this point – especially religious conservatives. Jesus was a hippy, after all, and the 1960s performed a useful service in reminding us of this. So was Saint Francis. As for Harrison, “My Sweet Lord,” will always be a deeply religious song to me; and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” my favorite later Beatles composition. At least Harrison didn’t descend to the hideous banality of Lennon’s “Imagine.” And at least he had the presence of mind to bestow us with the following sentence repeated by Waldman: “I’ll tell you one thing for sure, once you get to the point where you’re actually doing things for truth’s sake, then nobody can ever touch you again, because you’re harmonizing with a greater power.” I pray he is right now.

MY SWEET POWERBOOK: Speaking of religion, the several hundred emails inquiring how I’m doing in MacLand deserve a response – and I simply couldn’t respond to them all individually. Simply put, I’ve been working on this sleek little thing for a day or so now, and I’ve had no problems to speak of, just a little adjustment to figure out what goes where. In general, the organization seems far more intuitive than Microsoft. If you love aesthetics, there’s also no comparison. I’ve been blissing out to the new New Order album, Get Ready, on my iPod at the same time. Now all I need is a Segway to jump on and I’m all set. Seriously, thanks for all the offers of help, support and spiritual solidarity from my new friends in MacLand. You also helped boost our visits last Friday to a cool 36,000 in one day. I think that’s a record.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “War is repugnant to the people of the United States; yet it is war that has made their nation and it is through their power to wage war that they dominate the world. Americans are proficient at war in the same way that they are proficient at work. It is a task, sometimes a duty. Americans have worked at war since the seventeenth century, to protect themselves from the Indians, to win their independence from George III, to make themselves one country, to win the whole of the their continent, to extinguish autocracy and dictatorship in the world outside. It is not their favoured form of work. Left to themselves, Americans build, cultivate, bridge, dam, canalise, invent, teach, manufacture, think, write, lock themselves in struggle with the eternal challenges that man has chosen to confront, and with an intensity not known elsewhere on the globe. Bidden to make war their work, Americans shoulder the burden with intimidating purpose. There is, I have said, an American mystery, the nature of which I only begin to perceive. If I were obliged to define it, I would say it is the ethos—masculine, pervasive, unrelenting—of work as an end in itself. War is a form of work, and America makes war, however reluctantly, however unwillingly, in a particularly workmanlike way. I do not love war; but I love America.” – John Keegan, Warpaths.

Check out Byron York’s devastating little piece in National Review Online about Bill Clinton’s response to the 1996 Khobar bombings, and indeed all such terrorst incidents in his term of office. His instinct? Take a poll. All the more reason for president Bush to ignore the Berke–Dowd double-punch in today’s Times goading W to go all-political in the war on terrorism. There is simply no trade-off whatsoever between the war and the economy right now, and anyone who thinks so is either dumb or deliberately trying to trick W into repeating not his father’s but his predecessor’s mistakes. If we win the war, the economy will do fine; if we half-win this war, the economy will tank at the slightest hint of another terrorist attack. Memo to W: ignore these domestic-policy types. Veto the stimulus package; focus like a laser-beam on Iraq.

POWERBOOK HEAVEN: Well, I know this makes for a Hollywood ending, but I bought the Powerbook yesterday and this is my first posting using the new system. It’s a) beautiful; b) easily mastered in about fifteen minutes for the tasks I need to perform; c) extremely quick. I also bought the incredible little iPod. Jeez. My CD collection is busily disappearing into my hard drive as we speak (not as painful as it sounds) and I’ll soon have any music I want portable in what amounts to a cigarette box. I’ve used previous MP3 systems before and this one leaves them all in the dust. Anyway, before I turn into a total Mac-head, I’ll close. But I have to wonder now: whatever took me so long?

Well, none of you took any notice of my plea for no more emails. Not to worry. They’ve been fascinating. The bottom line is that the overwhelming majority of you guys back Apple. I could recite the dozens of stories I’ve gotten of similar wretched Microsoft experiences, but they’re all essential paraphrases of my own sad little tale. But what really strikes me is the semi-religious enthusiasm of Mac-users. You’d think I’d just converted to Islam or something. It’s really something to hear the sheer zeal with which Mac users speak of their computers. This is more than consumerism. It’s something like a lifestyle, or at least an attitude. Of course, I’m now stricken with worries that if Apple comes along and offers us sponsorship or something, I’ll be pillloried for conflicts of interest. You can almost hear David Talbot licking his chops now. But screw that. I’m shopping for an iBook tomorrow and if it sucks, I’ll tell you. If I turn into as big an Apple fan as my correspondents, I’ll tell you as well. And if Steve Jobs wants to advertize on a site with lots of Apple fans, my email address is easily found. ;-). Think different, eh?

Spin this one, Gene Lyons! According to Drudge, Vanity Fair is preparing an investigative piece on the catastrophic failure of the Clinton State Department to snag bin Laden and learn vast amounts of information about al Qaeda in 1996 – occasioned by a remarkable offer to cooperate from the Sudanese government. I’ve mentioned this point several times before – and had the usual hysterical response from Clintonistas that I’m a “hater,” etc, etc. (How many Clinton-“haters” edited a magazine that pioneered Clinton’s rise as a candidate? How many enthusiastically endorsed him in 1992? How many urged not to vote for conviction in impeachment? How many wrote a screed against Kenneth Starr at the height of the impeachment battle? How many consistently supported his right to a private sexual life? I did all of the above. My disgust at Clinton comes from nothing more than close empirical observation of his public malfeasance, corruption and lies for eight long years.) The truth is that the Clinton administration was worse than incompetent when it came to preventing international terrorism: its policies were dangerously naxefve, ineffective and counter-productive. As usual, none of the main players will ever concede error. Which is why the press will have to work even harder to nail their culpability and remind us more forcefully of the damage the 42d president did.

THE CLONING HYPE: Two useful pieces dissecting the press’s recent hype of the human cloning threat. If you want to be reassured about the science and unnerved by the “journalism,” read this Buffalo News piece. For more depth on how small companies can manipulate gullible science reporters, check out this piece by my colleague Jon Cohn at The New Republic. Ignore Jon’s statist remedies – the guy would have the government take over your toe-nail clipper if he could. The rest is very smart and worthwhile.

“The Taliban’s collapse shattered two myths: Islamic invincibility and American weakness — myths amplified over eight years by the Clinton administration’s empty gestures and demonstrable impotence in the face of Islamic terror. The Islamic street exploded after Sept. 11, not because of rage — the rage is there always — but because of triumphalism.” Charles Krauthammer today manages to say in two sentences the core of what we now know. His advice to tackle terrorist cells in Africa before Iraq also makes sense to me. I hope the president reads this column and gets the message. I think – and trust – he does.

TWO MORE SENTENCES: “When the Europeans subsidize business we call it dirigisme. When Republicans do it they call it a stimulus package.” Don’t miss David Brooks’ superb evisceration of the hideous bill now almost destined to become law. Be depressed. Be very depressed.

MBEKI MADNESS, CTD: The one truly effective use of certain anti-HIV drugs is to prevent transmission of the virus from pregnant mother to child. Nevaripine is one such drug. It is free to the South African government, donated by the evil drug companies, and yet Pretoria is refusing to distribute it to a majority of its provinces for reasons that simply defy rational explanation. This is not a complex drug regimen – it’s one pill a day. The drug is not toxic and is taken for a limited length of time. It literally saves the lives of infants, 20,000 of whom are at risk of early death each year of AIDS in that country. So why is Pretoria stopping its distribution? They claim expense in the administration of the drug – but its administration is among the easiest there is, and the drug itself is free. They are also preventing private practitioners from dispensing it – something that would cost the country nothing. Remember: mother-to-infant transmission is by far the easiest method of preventing HIV from spreading. Yet this simplest of steps is being prevented in the only African country with the health infrastructure to make real progress against HIV. This is more Mbeki madness. And it highlights dramatically the fact that in Africa, the last group responsible for not tackling the AIDS crisis are the drug companies.

SLATE GOES WOBBLY: Steve Chapman writes a singularly unpersuasive piece in Slate against taking the war to Iraq. The basic argument is that deterrence works, and that Saddam would never actually use all the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons he’s been spending so much time and money constructing. The reason? Our ability to respond in kind prevents him. Only if we really pushed him into a corner would he be tempted to use such weapons. There are a few questions worth asking about this line of argument: a) why does Chapman think Saddam has gone to such great lengths to get these weapons – even to the point of watching his country pummeled by international sanctions – if he has no intention of using them against his most formidable enemy? b) he has used them – against his domestic enemies after the Gulf War debacle; c) why couldn’t he cooperate with al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to use these weapons indirectly and so avoid blame and therefore retaliation? To reassure us on the first two counts, Chapman relies on Saddam’s mental stability to argue that he wouldn’t do something irrational. Hmmm. And Hitler would never do something crazy like invade Russia, either. Let’s just say this wager is a lot more persuasive when the consequence of its being wrong isn’t the elimination of a major Western city.

THE CHEMICAL OPTION: Then there’s the simple possibility of Saddam using a third party to do the deed. Chapman bats this away. “[I]t strains belief to picture a secular Arab ruler giving the ultimate weapon to fanatical terrorists who want to establish Islamic theocracies across the region.” But not all fanatical terrorists are of this stripe. Some are motivated by hatred of Israel or the West for less fundamentalist reasons than bin Laden. And there’s plenty of evidence that Saddam has trafficked with these people in the past – including the first attempt to blow up the WTC, an attempt which involved a rudimentary, failed effort at chemical warfare. And what if we couldn’t determine who was behind the attack? How does deterrence theory work then? Chapman says it would be easy. Any chemical or biological attack would point directly to Saddam, like O.J. at the crime scene. Really? Chapman’s example to prove this is our ability quickly to pin-point al Qaeda as the source of 9/11. But the more salient example is the anthrax attack. As far as the public knows, we still have no clue who did this – despite several letters and several deaths. So why are we sure Saddam wouldn’t be able to pull the same thing off – or hasn’t already? If anything, the anthrax attacks have made this scenario more likely. I get the feeling from Chapman’s piece that he still doesn’t get it. This country is in grave and mortal peril. So far as we know, any major city could be subject to a devastating chemical or biological attack at any time. Two such attacks have already occurred in the last three months. What does it take to get our deterrence theorists and multilateralists to realize that the world has changed – and that inaction is the most dangerous and reckless option of all?

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Exporting MTV would only serve to confirm Islam’s worst fears and most accurate suspicions about the West – that we are a people who exploit women in crueler and more effective ways than the Taliban ever considered. We turn them into sex objects. What we do to young people in general is no better. While the Islamists program their young people into becoming suicide bombers, MTV programs our children into self-destructive, sexual time bombs … MTV is not an ally of Western civilization in the war with competing ideologies. It can only provide our enemies with more ammunition to be used against us. And, because of its impact on our own kids, it represents a corrosive, fifth column assault on everything that has made America great and good.” – Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.

“‘We’re watching you,’ said one [activist] voicemail message saved by Jeff Sheehy, a press officer for the AIDS Research Institute at UC San Francisco. ‘Your name is on the list of enemies of the homosexual community. We’re out here on the streets and we’re going to make sure that you don’t open your mouth again to demonize us.’ ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Sheehy said. ‘I’m afraid to go to work.'” – from the Los Angeles Times today.

OK, OK, no more emails, please. I’m defecting to Apple this weekend. And to all of you geek snobs: you’re right. I’m a total techie loser. Like most bewildered and abandoned consumers of Microsoft’s horrible products. (I guess that’s one corporate sponsor I can wave goodbye to.)

Yes, I’m having the proverbial root canal thing this afternoon. Beats Windows XP.

Hilarious misplaced caption from the Washington Post online yesterday, sent to me by an amused reader. Check it out.

The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s biggest gay rights group, condemned the usQueers.com site today. Congrats to them. Here’s the quote: “‘Calling for the death of people is reprehensible and in no way, shape or form should be condoned by anybody,’ David Smith, an HRC spokesman, said after viewing the contents of usQueers.com. ‘These types of sites, on either side of any debate, should be condemned in the strongest possible way,’ Smith said.” Amen, David. And thanks.