Category: The Dish

Continuing the debate, Larison’s two cents:

Of course, it is true when you opt to bomb civilian centers, especially in an indiscriminate, fire-bombing way, that you have at that time chosen to commit war crimes, and it is also true that people who have reconciled themselves to the mass slaughter of civilians have chosen to justify pretty much anything in the name of fighting the enemy.  It does not follow that because you have gone to war against another state that you have therefore necessarily embarked on a course that requires you to engage in those war crimes.  The choice to commit those crimes comes later, and that choice becomes inevitable only if those crimes are absolutely necessary to achieve victory.  In fact, such crimes tend to stand out for just how utterly unnecessary and excessive they are.  If you accept the inhuman calculations of total war and unconditional surrender, you might say that war crimes are inevitable, but if you really accept the logic of total war you don’t believe that there is anything done in war that violates morality or law, because total war is the practical negation of both.

And in this war, the president decided to commit war crimes in advance. In fact, torture was, we now know, one of the central strategies of the war. Its rapid spread across every theater of war – and its emergence into the daylight – was not part of the original plan. But once you have sanctioned something at the very top, the limits on those at the bottom, always vulnerable, are just blown away.

This rings true to me:

Almost all working class folks have about the same knowledge of politics as you and I have about cars.  Which is to say, on one level, quite a lot, but it’s not what they devote their lives to understanding.  So, as we do in the case of cars, they turn to other mechanisms, such as brand loyalty, to make their decisions.

What they know about Clinton is that she was a part of the Administration that spent eight years talking about issues that were important to them and presiding over an era of peace and prosperity. So what they are going on here is familiarity and positive experiences, the same thing that I do when I buy only Japanese cars.  This is a perfectly reasonable way of going about doing things even if I might make a mistake and select a very high quality Japanese car (Hillary in this analogy) instead of a surprisingly better this year in spite of lack of experience American car (Obama).  They are not are suckers who are fooled by Hillary’s Crown Royal shot (perhaps if it had been JD) or whether Obama’s "bitter" comment represents the totality of his views any more than I am a sucker who is fooled (or influenced at all) by television advertisements for cars.

I found out that a friend supported Clinton last night. I was stunned. I asked him why. He said he liked the 1990s, they were good times, he’d like them back. That was it. He had no real feelings about Obama, but he knew the Clinton name and associated it with good times. I pushed further. That was it. He’s a man who isn’t too interested in politics but knew enough to back the familiar. It may be that simple.

Alexander Linklater profiles Hitchens:

As with other public polemicists, arguments for or against any issue become arguments for or against him. His starting point is always confrontation, his procedure to wrestle out contradiction, his endpoint a position of certainty. It’s that preternatural capacity for certainty, carried through the velocity and elegance of his writing, which has made him the most scintillating and disturbing British journalist of the ’68 generation. He is not exaggerating much when he says: "The world I live in is one where I have five quarrels a day, each with someone who really takes me on over something; and if I can’t get into an argument, I go looking for one, to make sure I trust my own arguments, to hone them."

I realize that my major difference with Hitch is less ideological or political – we have both mutated over the years in response to a changing world – than temperamental. I love arguing and I’m resigned to the fact that war is sometimes a necessary evil. But in the end, I like calm in my private life and would be only too happy to live in a world where conflict were less constant and in which the peaceful activities overtake the martial ones. I loved the 1990s. I didn’t see them as decadent or somehow amoral. Deep down, I’m anti-war. Deep down, I suspect Hitch isn’t. And that’s why neoconservatism, while analytically perceptive in the past, does not ultimately appeal to me. You have to love war to be a real neocon.

"Make no mistake, there are people in the United States who despise America… hate America… and hate our way of life. Barack Hussein Obama is THEIR CANDIDATE and they will do everything in their power to make sure that patriotic Americans do not understand exactly how dangerous Barack Hussein Obama really is. They’ll hide his record and his past and they’ll tar-and-feather his opposition," – Floyd Brown, creator of the Willie Horton ads, asking fro money from the Hewitt-Newsmax-WND right.

Noah Shachtman’s reaction to Petraeus’s nomination to commander of U.S. Central Command:

One camp in the military wants the armed forces to focus more and more on combatting insurgencies and other non-traditional wars, like the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The other crowd is worried about the Army becoming losing its big war skills.  The counterinsurgents won today.  And not just in the elevation of Petraeus, who oversaw the writing of the military’s new-ish counterinsurgency manual.  Gen. Richard Cody, the last Army vice chief, was loudly warning last year that the Army was putting too much effort into training for small, dirty wars.  I doubt rather strongly that Lt. Gen. Chiarelli, who’s served two tours in Iraq, is of the same opinion.

Thomas Barnett’s thoughts:

If Petraeus goes from CENTCOM to the CJCS, which many will now anticipate all the more, depending on his perceived success in this post, then he logically ends up as the pivotal player in military’s post-9/11 evolution, eclipsing Schoomaker and Rumsfeld by a ways.

U.S. Army Specialist Joshua Early, 24, sits with his family during his Purple Heart medal ceremony at Walter Reed Army Medical Center April 23, 2008 in Washington, DC. Early was wounded by an IED explosion while conductiong a raid in the Diyala Province of Iraq. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

A county-based decision tree.

Tim Haab reposts his rant against politicians meddling with gas prices:

Look, in all seriousness.  High gas prices are NOT an economic or political problem.  They are the result of the natural workings of markets.  There is nothing wrong with the market–and no reason, other than self-preservation and the false appearance of being able to do something, for politicians to intervene.  Supplies are decreasing–both temporarily through unexpected refinery shut-downs and permanently through stock depletion.  Demand is increasing–both in the U.S. and worldwide.  Both of these will cause gas prices to rise and that’s good.  If gas prices don’t rise, we will consume gas even faster and run out sooner.  Higher gas prices encourage conservation and encourage investment in alternatives.  High gas prices might be uncomfortable while we search for viable long-term solutions, but they’re more comfortable than the alternative: no gas and no solutions.

The WSJ has a profile of a friend and ex-lawyer who is now a song-writer in the finals of the American Idol composition contest. You can vote here.

Bill Clinton directly accuses the Obama campaign of hostility to working class voters. When you see the brutal politics the Clintons are still eagerly deploying, you have to believe this will go to the convention. The Clintons are prepared to use any argument, any Republican tactic, and any social or cultural division to stay in the game. By tactically morphing into Rove Republicans, they are deliberately pivoting off a myth about Obama to make him unelectable. I think the idea that they will withdraw when Obama reaches the actual number of delegates required for the nomination is a myth. They will insist on having their say at the convention and changing the votes of pledged delegates if they need to. This is their party, in their minds. Obama has no right to lead it. Until he waits his turn and the Clintons give their blessing.

To stay in the game, the level and suicidal quality of their attacks on Obama require a similar form of tactic in response. But Obama will not and should not go there. The one profound difference between him and the Clintons is that he will actually not do some things for the sake of power. God knows the Clontons have brought him to the verge of that – but pure cynicism would rebut his core message and destroy his candidacy as surely as the Clintons are trying to do. And to say what needs to be said about the Clintons – the truth about their character and their shared pathologies – would be a horribly divisive and brutal move. It would render the Clintons even more unelectable than they already are, undermine the Obama message and give the White House to the GOP. What’s striking to me about this race is that it is the young insurgent who is still acting as the responsible party elder; and the former president who is behaving like a man who will destroy his own party in order to soothe his own sense of entitlement and ego.

After this presidency, after eight years of war and debt and torture and deceit and cynicism, to see the Democratic party self-destruct is really something. They were given a chance to remake the country and regain their soul; and the Clintons could not bear it if they were not the vehicles for such a shift. I don’t believe anyone in the Democratic party can or will stop them. This is a kamikaze mission.

(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty.)