Category: The Dish

The walk of shame:

A dispatch from rural Oregon.

Some opinion from around the web. Yglesias:

Over the past year or so I’ve heard various voices try to propagate revisionist accounts of Israel’s short-lived effort to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon where people tried to argue that the mission was only an apparent failure, but actually succeeded in some sense. I think we can see from events like this that that’s total nonsense — Hezbollah is very much not crushed.

Jeffrey Goldberg:

Hezbollah has been doing a bang-up job this week undermining Lebanon’s future on behalf of its sponsors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Syrian intelligence. It is simultaneously doing effective work undermining its apologists in the West. We’ve heard the arguments over and over again: Hezbollah is social service agency; Hezbollah wants to join the Lebanese political process; Hezbollah is not in fact dominated by murderous Jew-haters. And so on.

Walid Phares:

Within the beltway, lots of analyzing on both sides of the Potomac: What can the U.S do to respond to the Syro-Iranian offensive which is obliterating a young democracy so dear to the speech writers of the President and many congressional leaders from both parties?

A crushing defeat to democracy in Lebanon under the eyes of an American public eager to see advances in the War on terror will be devastating. U.S warships are patrolling the international waters along the Lebanese coasts. A ten thousand strong UNIFIL force is deployed inside southern Lebanon. But what can this deployment of force do to deter Hezbollah’s determination? Many had advised the U.S Government years ago to implement gradual steps to contain Hezbollah in Lebanon, before this drama would unfold.

Rational Grounds, a Beirut blog:

Hezbollah has played this very wisely. They’ve spent the last two years laying the groundwork for this – establishing communication networks, expanding into new areas, growing their forces. In December 2006 they began a sit-in around downtown, and from there they’ve been able to cut many of the major roads linking the East and West over the past couple days. Even in their recent moves, they’ve positioned themselves and then dared the government to move them. If the government sends in the army against them, they can then say they’re defending themselves. Of course, that’s a thin argument now, but it’s becoming increasingly irrelevant.  So now, we see what the government will do. Does Hezbollah and its allies control Lebanon? Or do we have a civil war?

Abu Muqawama:

…the fact is, if civil war does break out, Hizbollah is going to get the blame from basically everyone but Syria, Iran, and other Shia worldwide. This is not 2006 and this is not Israel that Hizbollah is staring down. This is 2008 and these are other Lebanese — Sunni and Druze and Christian. Hizbollah can’t count on the support from anyone but a few pariah states, and though Abu Muqawama is not quick to start quoting U.S. government officials in times like these, what Zalmay Khalilzad said yesterday probably sums up what a lot of folks are feeling, that Hezbollah had "made progress in establishing a state within a state. They have not implemented agreements and resolutions with regard to disarming their militia. That in turn is encouraging other groups to rearm as well. There is a lack of progress because of their opposition in terms of the election of a president, although everyone has agreed on Mr. Suleiman."

Hizbollah will claim that’s not a fair representation of the realities in Beirut. And Hizbollah — and the Shia — have legitimate political greivances within what passes for a political system in Lebanon. But if things continue to go to guns, they will get all the blame for the new civil war because following the last civil war, they were the only group that was allowed to keep their weapons. (Well, they and the Palestinian militants.) Is Hizbollah ready to take on the blame for this in the same way the PLO (unjustly) took all the blame for the last war?

The current GOP has a problem:

As Ron Paul himself has pointed out many times, his campaign didn’t do anything to organize support on the Internet.  That’s not how it works. 

What happens is that millions of people independently come to the same conclusion that there is something wrong with the System and that it needs to change.  Then they start organizing on their own, and rally behind candidates who best represent their views.  The organizing is bottom-up, not top-down. 

Non-Paul Republicans can’t tap into that because their entire political model is authoritarian:  "We report, we decide."  That model appeals only to passive-minded people, and passive-minded people aren’t inclined to self-organize. 

I wonder if Obama’s and Paul’s amazing web success is a harbinger of a more libertarian and self-empowered political culture – because the web does not reward obedience, submission, or authoritarianism. It saddens me a great deal to see conservatism in America increasingly lean toward top-down, authoritarian, fear-based politics. In its best incarnation, conservatism is about self-government, individual freedom and hope-based politics. It’s about trusting people, not corralling them. In  this, the web is the right’s natural ally, and it’s a very telling sign of American conservatism’s decadence that it doesn’t get the Internet as effectively as others.

McCain’s performance on the Daily Show and his remarks today are, in word, slimy. Here’s the gist:

"It’s very obvious to everyone that Senator Obama shares nothing of the values or goals of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization," McCain said. "But it’s also a fact that a spokesperson from Hamas said that he approves of Obama’s candidacy. I think that’s of interest to the American people."

The right answer is that nominees for president do not legitimize the attempts of foreign terrorist groups to intervene in American elections. But what’s galling here is the Clintonian passive-aggressive pose: I’m not saying it, but the "America people" are "interested". It’s a way to peddle slime while pretending that you’re not. At some point, McCain will have to choose. But the signs aren’t too good.

R.W. Johnson reports from Zimbabwe:

Perhaps the most important thing about the election was that, because Mbeki and Mugabe had miscalculated so spectacularly, Zanu-PF was caught off-guard and for several days there was complete uncertainty. That period provided an aperture through which Zimbabweans could glimpse an alternative future – and many did. It was clear that, with a new democratic government, there would be immediate British and American help, quickly followed by the EU, the World Bank and IMF, with the emphasis on food aid and the restabilisation of the currency. One consequence would be that Zimbabwe would cease to be a client state of South Africa and instead become more generally dependent on developed country donors and investors. Doubtless, Mbeki and Mugabe would see this as a victory for neocolonialism, though one is bound to say that even if the prospect was described in those terms, ordinary Zimbabweans would happily vote for it. And, in no time at all, as the Zimbabwean economy revived, South African companies of every kind would move in.

The new mayor of London has an openly gay deputy mayor and several other openly gay – and married – appointees stand out. When NRO-niks start talking about a British conservative revival, they often fail to point out that it is happening while the Tories have decisively broken with the anti-gay policies that the GOP regards as non-negotiable features of their conservatism. I should add that Boris is also an unashamed member of the most privileged part of the most privileged elite. He went to Britain’s most exclusive schools, Eton and Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon. David Cameron is also an Etonian and a Bullingdon member. And yet no right-winger in Britain accuses them of not caring about regular folks.

Isn’t it revealing that America’s political conversation now has more class consciousness than Britain’s? Thanks, Karl.

Shark-surfing, man:

Tomasky adds his two cents:

A former president married to a current vice president who really thinks she should be president creates the potential for way too much mischief that could undermine the president.

The trouble is: the Clintons will create mischief wherever they are. If Obama becomes president without them they will do all they can to undermine, destroy, and polarize him. The question is how one deals with sociopaths like them. It’s not easy.

Mickey Kaus tries to explain why he gets so much wrong about politics so often.