Category: The Dish

A reader comments:

OK, in hindsight it’s dreadful: a bunch of suburban kids lip-syncing high-pitched hair metal w/o make make-up and garish bouffants. But you know what, by the standards of the genre, and the age of the band, they were pretty good. The production quality, while also cheesy looking back, was good as well.

He clearly was a damn interesting guy. And anyone w/ the courage to wail like that on camera would obviously have no fear when it comes to putting the smack down on some terrorists in a time of need.

Yep. Bingham for me represents not just an openly gay hero. But the kind of hero modern America still serves up: culturally open, tolerant, fun, at ease with modern life, and yet also quite prepared to fight to the death in defense of Western freedom. He represents a lot that the curent right-wing doesn’t seem to understand: just because blue and purple America loves modernity doesn’t mean it is somehow decadent, unpatriotic or too weak to resist Islamist murderers. 9/11 showed that all of America, apart from its far left fringe, was prepared to fight. That legacy of unity, so bitterly squandered by Karl Rove, can and must be summoned up again. But not by this president; and not yet by his party.

(Photo of Mark Bingham, far right, and his Steelers rugby team-mates.)

America isn’t his only victim. Sacha Baron-Cohen went back to his alma mater, Cambridge University in England, as Borat. Enjoy another country being ridiculed:

"One might reasonably argue that a very good way to protect marriage is to remain faithful to one’s spouse, but in politics that sort of behavior won’t raise money for the interest groups or votes for the Republicans. In this case, "family values" wasn’t about Sherwood’s personal example, but his record of keeping homosexuals from marrying. Wouldn’t it do more for the family to strengthen heterosexual marriage before telling others how to live their lives? Why have we seen so many politicians (and some clergy) who talk about "family values" turn out to be the worst practitioners of them?

With a change in focus, more people might want to hear why conservative Christians are faithful and, having heard, perhaps embrace that faithfulness. The culture might then reflect real "family values" from the bottom up, possibly even touching politicians in Washington," – Cal Thomas, getting it right.

Thomas has long warned, by the way, of politicizing faith and morals. This isn’t a new position of his. Check out his book of a while back. But it’s great to see some conservative voices restating a conservative case: Christianity is best expressed by personal example, not political agendas. And a Christianity that becomes indistinguishable from partisan politics has lost its soul.

"Why would [Rick] Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit – a sacred place of honor in evangelical tradition – to the inhumane, sick, and sinister evil that [Barack] Obama has worked for as a legislator?

According to press reports, it is because of a mutual respect that each feels towards the other over the AIDS/HIV pandemic on the African continent. That rationale however is not only dishonest, but not even logical given the two distinct positions that the men come to on the matter. Because of this supposed shared concern, Warren is ready to turn over the spiritual mantle to a man who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best in most of his public positions on the greatest moral tests of our time," – Kevin McCullough on Townhall.com, whose executive editor is Hugh Hewitt.

Check out his ads.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 3 pm.

Several readers have argued I have misunderstood Charles Krauthammer’s recent column. Here’s a succinct summary of the main critique:

I do not believe Krauthammer is attempting to re-write history or that he is even trying to sway discussion. His comments are about objectives, not reasons.  I see it as the difference between goals and motivations. They are intrinsically linked, but not the same thing. Would you not agree that the reason we invaded Iraq was the belief that Saddam had WMD’s while the objective was, as Krauthammer states, to "depose Saddam Hussein and replace his murderous regime with a self-sustaining, democratic government"?

Another reader makes a similar distinction between "rationales" and "objectives." I wrote that this might just be an oversight by Charles, but I don’t buy these readers’ argument for a second.

Take them on their own terms: let’s say "disarming Saddam" was a "reason" but not an "objective" of the war. It would surely follow nonetheless that if the rationale was a real, rather than invented, one, it would necessitate that a main objective of the invasion would be to find and secure those WMD sites as quickly as possible. In the weeks before Saddam could be deposed, surely these sites and weapons posed a serious risk. So securing them would have to be an "objective" of the war. At the very least, an objective would be to prevent the looting of such sites. And yet, as Woodward’s book reveals, and as many other sources now confirm, there was no serious plan for this, and many such sites were indeed looted while the coalition looked on and did nothing.

The objective evidence makes it more plausible now that the WMD argument was not sincerely held by the people planning the military invasion. Or if it was sincerely believed, the incompetence in execution was beyond belief. I say this reluctantly, and it’s not something I orginally even considered, let alone believed. But the empirical evidence for the unseriousness of the attempt to find WMDs in the invasion period is overwhelming. And that is why I wonder if Charles is guilty merely of a Freudian slip. Did he never believe the WMD argument either? Was it all a ruse for something else? Was it a "rationale" in the sense that it was not a real reason?

Here’s one of a kind: a bunch of Los Gatos High School students, c. 1989, making their own video for their own band. What makes it different is the lead singer. It’s Mark Bingham, the 9/11 hero, who helped bring down United Flight 93, and save Washington DC from another catastrophe. One of his bandmates sent it to me. And yes, it appears they are lipsyncing to "Revolution Calling" by Queensryche. Let’s just say: I’m glad Mark lost the mullet.

"If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible," – Henry Kissinger, speaking the bleeding obvious.

To see why it’s obvious, check out this report in the NYT about an American captain trying to "stand up" a local Iraqi police force. In the current security climate, created by Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney, it’s like trying to nail jello to a wall.

Even the Federalist Society is now divided:

As to the contentious issue of the reach of presidential authority, the Federalist Society membership is not united. Professor Yoo, who wrote several memorandums while in the Justice Department arguing that the president’s power is expanded during a war on terrorism, represents one wing of the conservatives, while many in the group are smaller-government libertarians.

At a spirited panel discussion Friday with Professor Yoo, one of the revered figures of the group, Prof. Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, branded as dangerous the notion of expanded powers for the executive branch because of the continuing fight against terrorism.

"This is an issue which splits this group right down the middle," Professor Epstein said.