Category: The Dish

Rumsfeld’s Sabotage

The fiasco in Iraq was preventable. But Rumsfeld insisted it occur. Good for Newsweek for telling it like it is:

The administration was not just unlucky. It was almost willfully blind to the risks entailed in invading and occupying a large, traumatized and deeply riven Arab country. Rumsfeld, who pushed aside Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell to take over even the planning for postwar Iraq, wanted a lean and mean force to get in and get out quickly. This was all well and good as long as American forces could turn over the job of running the country to an effective group of local Iraqis. But the planning for this was hamstrung by disputes over the postwar role of Iraqi exiles. When Iraq began to unravel, the administration—with little debate—lurched in the other direction. The White House installed Paul Bremer as a kind of grand pooh-bah over all of Iraq, but Rumsfeld refused to give him the forces he needed for a long occupation.

And Bush was so out of it and in denial that he simply acquiesced to the deranged intransigence of the real "decider," Dick Cheney.

The Vatican and the RNC

A reader writes:

You seem to confuse age of consent with pedophilia. One is a legal standard and the other a psychological one. Age of consent does not determine pedophilia which has a clinical defintion, not a legal one. That definition is a sexual interest in prepubescent children. And Foley object of desire was far past the age of puberty. While referred to in the press as 16 years old (which was correct) he turned 17 and may have been 17 when the messages were written. In one such message he referred to turn 18 in a few months time.

So this is not pedophilia by any clinical definition.

If the Foley incident is not about pedophilia, it is also not, it seems to me, about homosexuality. It’s fundamentally about the closet. The closet is so psychologically destructive it often produces pathological behavior. When you compartmentalize your life, you sometimes act out in one compartment in ways that you would never condone in another one. Think Clinton-Lewinsky, in a heterosexual context. But closeted gay men are particularly vulnerable to this kind of thing. Your psyche is so split by decades of lies and deceptions and euphemisms that integrity and mental health suffer. No one should excuse Foley’s creepy interactions; they are inexcusable, as is the alleged cover-up (although we shouldn’t jump to conclusions yet about who knew what when). But there’s a reason gay men in homophobic institutions behave in self-destructive ways.

Or think of it another way: what do the Vatican and the RNC have in common? Here’s one potential list: entrenched homophobia, psychologically damaged closet cases, inappropriate behavior toward teens and minors … and cover-ups designed entirely to retain power. The parallels are looking a little creepy. And the source is the same.

Dynamite?

John J. Miller thinks that’s what the Foley affair might be for the GOP. Kevin Drum agrees. I think it depends on whether this story gets more complicated, whether there’s more information to come about Foley’s Internet correspondence, and whether Republican higher-ups really did know as much before as they do now. We don’t know much that is solid about that yet.

Email of the Day

A reader writes:

I read your blog a couple of times a day, and it is so refreshing to see someone, a war supporter, call it like it is NOW. You’re absolutely right, we need mixed government to bring a sane balance back to policy emanating from Washington.  As a 46 y/o and retired Army officer, I’ve never been so fearful for the future of our country.  Power corrupts, and we’ve all seen that known lesson first hand – in the U.S. where we were accustomed to viewing, and judging from afar. Now it’s our way of life – and unless somebody applies the brakes soon, we’re lost. I know you’ve been targeted by the right-wing machine, but the Clintons survived it, and so will you if you stick to principle.

Torturing Innocents

Hugh Hewitt’s side-kick, Dean Barnett is all for it. Glenn Reynolds links approvingly, while of course being offended that anyone would think he supports torture. Money quote from a self-addressed series of questions on Hewitt’s blog-page:

Dean Barnett: … [T]he undeniable consensus is that water-boarding is an extremely productive interrogation tool.

8) That’s a very clinical way of putting it. Why don’t you go have yourself water-boarded and see how you like it.

DB: No thanks. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. I’m sure it’s extremely unpleasant. Does it rise to the level of ‘torture’? That’s for each individual to decide.

9) What do you think?

DB: I don’t care. If some body of linguists or semanticists convened a weekend retreat in Cambridge, impartially studied the issue and labeled it torture, I still wouldn’t care. The welfare of terrorists is not my concern. Even if all the Jack Bauer-type crap you see on ’24’ was the best way to go, I’d still be okay with it.

10) But it’s not just terrorists. It’s suspected terrorists. Surely that bothers you.

DB: It does. It’s inevitable that innocent people will be subjected to this kind of treatment. But this is war, and in war we make moral compromises.

I don’t know if Hewitt, a professed Christian, agrees. It seems odd that very complicated issues like when life might actually begin and end are subject to absolute certainty. But whether something is "torture" or not is up "for each individual to decide." When the right needs to defend the indefensible, a little moral relativism never hurts. But there’s a more devastating moment in the post: on one of the fudnamentals of a civilized society, Barnett bravely asserts:

"I don’t care."

Yes, the Bush flunkies just got a little more honest and a lot more sickening.

The GOP Party Line

Here’s Mark Levin with the Foley talking points from the RNC. Here’s another Republican argument that this is all about Democrat-MSM dirty tricks. Meanwhile, there’s some O-Reilly-esque harrumphing from partisan Democrats. Both sides’ eagerness to exploit this for political point-scoring make me a litte queasy. But I guess it’s October in an election year.