Category: The Dish

Dave Schuler, who has opposed most US wars in the last quarter century, still worries about a humbler foreign policy:

There are perfectly good reasons to argue against our present willingness to intervene militarily in the absence of a specific threat to our own security. The reasons include moral ones, national sovereignty, and the expense but I don’t think we should kid ourselves into believing that we’ll make friends by not intervening. We won’t.

But we may not make as many enemies. I’ve found myself seriously re-visiting my own inclination to support US intervention, as I have, unlike Schuler, for much of the last quarter century (the exceptions being Somalia, Darfur and Haiti). The issue seems to me to be the kind of intervention and the type of enemy we face. Islamism is not easily overcome by occupying Muslim countries. If we haven’t learned that from Iraq, we’re dreaming. Even Rumsfeld came to see that flypaper has its limits if it also generates more flies.

The latest Clinton pre-spin. "She has succeeded," says Vilsack.

A stunning graphic.

The latest poll puts him at 37 with Romney at 31. Yay! If Romney loses in his neighboring state, it really looks lame.

He can still make you laugh. And, yes, I will read his book when I get a second. Least I can do after he trashed mine.

Marty Lederman on the DOJ counsel appointed to investigate war crimes authorized by the president. Paul Kiel has his resume. Encouraging background from the WaPo:

Durham is well known in New England legal circles as a tough, publicity-averse prosecutor who has specialized in organized crime cases.

Organized crime is good background for this, isn’t it?

Liberals are reading them:

I guess part of it is that I’m a glutton for punishment, but also find that my own beliefs – and my arguments to defend them – are strengthened when I understand where my opponents are coming from. Also, as you put it, I find their "internal battles" right now extremely engaging. My favorite is Malkin’s blog.  I’m a registered commenter there, and there is nothing more thrilling than dropping a perfectly sane, reasoned comment from a liberal perspective into a chicken little-esque thread and either 1) watching the thread come to a standstill, or 2) watching their heads explode.

The trouble with Kos’s "just-win-and-beat-the-right" philosophy is that it gets intellectually dull after a while. I’ve found Kos much less readable recently than it used to be. Bitter never sells. And Malkin is always entertaining in a hathetic kind of way.

A good new ad against the Plastic One. Ambers notes:

Mitt Romney’s attempts to dial back expectations aren’t too convincing.

To wit:

"If 50 percent of the turnout is evangelical Christians, it would be very difficult for us to finish first in that kind of situation," Doug Gross, [the chairman of Mitt Romney’s campaign in Iowa], said. "In that instance, I’d feel very good about a nice, strong second-place finish."

She’s a plagiarist as well.

"Thanks to McCain and Graham, our intelligence services have lost the ability to use interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that have a  proven record of securing vital information from hardened terrorists. Our government instead must now rely on techniques that have a record of failing to secure such information," – Paul Mirengoff, Powerline. A record of failing?