Category: The Dish

That’s what Kristol and Kagan are now favoring. Money concession to the 41 crowd:

As for the Baker commission’s likely recommendation that the United States should engage Syria and Iran in the search for solutions in Iraq, we are skeptical that those countries will want to be helpful. But it is one thing to seek their help while we are losing and withdrawing, when our negotiating position is at its weakest, and quite another to engage in such diplomacy while we increase our force levels and try to improve the security situation. If people are serious about negotiating with the likes of Syria and Iran, they should want our diplomats to go in with as strong a hand as possible.

Maybe that’s the deal they are now aiming for: more troops and more realism. My only worry about this is that it really is too late. As another reader comments:

I think the thing we have not come to terms with is just how atomized and broken Iraq has become. Every plan everyone proposes presupposes that leaders can deliver their communities, ala the Bosnia peace accords. That is true whether you are talking about partition or unification. But it just feels to me like Iraq is in little shards, other than Kurdistan.

It also feels to me, when I see the kind of brazen kidnapping of 150 people in broad daylight, that we have no clue what is going on there, no real intel, because no one can get a bird’s eye view of the place. Everyone is in their own green zone or fox hole or walled garden. In Lebanon, reporters could cross lines and really feel like they had some kind of coherent picture of the battlespace. But I don’t think any party has that in Iraq – not us and not Maliki. It makes one reluctant to propose anything.

I’m torn between these two analyses. But I’m leaning toward an acceptance that Iraq may have to experience an actual civil war before any settlement can really hold. It was suppressed for decades. We had one chance to exert control and unwind the sectarian dynamic peacefully; and we blew it.

Iran’s leaders hang another man for homosexuality. Hundreds attend the public execution.

The Onion reveals the real source of his inner conflict.

"[Sullivan] will be the official voice of conservatism for decades," – Mark Steyn, voicing his deeper fears.

From the Missoulian:

In the state Senate, tied 25-25 between Democrats and Republicans after last week’s elections, Republican Sen. Sam Kitzenberg of Glasgow said Monday he plans to switch parties, giving Democrats a 26-24 majority.

"I’m a moderate, and there is no room left in the Republican Party for moderates," Kitzenberg said. "I’m not leaving the Republican Party; it has basically left me."

South Otago, New Zealand, 11 am.

Kevin Drum presents some interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive data.

Grim but important reading on what to do in Iraq; and what victory could even begin to mean at this point.

A Cape Town reader writes:

I’m glad to see you mention that South Africa has today legalized gay marriage. This is truly a great thing. Not to belittle this great civil rights achievement, I do worry though that this is relatively meaningless in the greater context of everyday South African life.

What does it help gaining a civil right such as this, if at the same time one of the the most basic human rights, the right to life itself, is daily violated in a very large scale here in South Africa. We are suffering from a wave of lawlessness and violent criminality in this country, second only to places like Columbia. South Africa has one of the highest murder, rape and other violent crime rates in the world (that is probably if you discount places like Iraq at the moment).

Yes, legalizing marriage rights for all is progressive and the right thing to do, but I wish there is more international outcry (as was the case during the apartheid years) about the atrocities that happen here on a daily basis. How ironic that we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, yet at the same time our deputy president, Jacob Zuma, stands on a public forum (during his rape trial) and proudly states that it is ok to have unprotected sex with an HIV positive person (a family member who he allegedly raped) as long as you shower afterwards.

Spot-on. I also found the movie to be inspired but a bit repetitive and one-note. But one scene was indeed transcendent, and A. O. Scott understands why:

In the film, Borat is accompanied on his journey across America by his producer, a grossly obese, unshaven fellow of questionable hygienic diligence named Azamat. One evening, Borat emerges from the shower to discover Azamat lying in the hotel-room bed, masturbating over Borat‚Äôs cherished pictures from ‘Baywatch.’ In a fury, Borat attacks his friend, and what follows is an extended nude man-on-man wrestling match, followed by a hot pursuit through hallways, elevators and a crowded banquet room ‚Äî a tour de force of jiggling flesh, unkempt body hair and startling erotic implication.

A very hard scene to describe, not only because the standards of this publication impose constraints that the M.P.A.A.’s R rating ‚Äî which apparently mandated the superimposition of black bars over some choice bits of anatomy ‚Äî does not. And not only because I was laughing so hard that my vision went blurry and my pen fell from my hand. But the intensity of that laughter offers a clue. I was helpless, unhinged, completely out of my mind. This had nothing to do with Kazakhstan or America or ‘cultural learnings’ of any kind. This was, the display of skin notwithstanding, one of the oldest jokes in the book: a tall, skinny man and a short, fat man fighting. A no-brainer. The dumbest kind of dumb show. And, therefore, a brief ‚Äî actually, an almost unbearably long ‚Äî reminder of a glorious tradition. To say that Borat and Azamat‚Äôs naked skirmish resists capture in words is to identify it as the moment when ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings’ transcends its small-screen origins and achieves the condition of cinema, climbing the ladder from titter to yowl, past belly laugh and into the wordless Utopian realm of the boffo.

(Photo: Ralf Juergens/Getty.)