Category: The Dish

"You have to wonder whether he or Giuliani would put people on the bench that reflect my Christian values," – a Republican voter in Iowa. What Christian values are involved in judging the constitution, one wonders? I had no idea that the Gospels actually had guidance on judicial philosophy.

A profile of Nobel-winner Orham Pamuk, "celebrity outsider." Hat tip: Arts Journal.

Right, but wrong:

I think Paul’s rebuttal [to Ruth Marcus] is correct, so far as the "circumstances" are concerned. But the circumstances are of course not the only thing to have changed since he opined on this topic in the past. His modes of analysis and expression have changed too, and radically, in ways that often seem calculated to obscure the fact that he is one of the four or five most brilliant economists of his generation. This is not incompetence or inadvertence on his part; it appears to be a conscientious choice. He wants to fuel the rage of the administration’s opponents more than he wants to help people think through the arguments. He feels that this now serves the greater good. Bush and his people are too wicked for dispassionate analysis, he believes; there will be time for Seriousness later.

Are they the only coherent response to a global open-source insurgency? Reihan notes a must-read blog post by John Robb of Global Guerillas. Money Robb quote:

The US military is on the slow path to the realization that nation-building — from reconstruction to other forms of traditional COIN dogma that serve to return legitimacy to the government — doesn’t work. Politics and populations in our new global environment fragment faster than they can be assembled into cohesive entities. What does work to slow the spread of temporary autonomous zones and open source insurgencies are open source militias…

The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?

Is this the real lesson of Iraq?

Some helpful background on John Robb and his ideas here. The obvious benefit of this strategy is that it allows us to do more with less, and avoid the financial and human hemmorhaging of a permanent occupation of a place like Iraq, where nation-building seems increasingly a quixotic exercise.

Michael at Balloon Juice writes: 

It’ll be a ton of fun watching the Democrats in Congress do nothing about the now obvious felonies commited by both the President of the United States and his Vice President…  So, let’s watch what happens. As of this posting, I see nothing on Malkin, NRO, Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, and others explaining how McClellan is just a tool of the wacky left. But it’s early yet.

I guess I spoke too soon:

This too.

Tony Perkins joins the throng with a pointed column:

The point is that Giuliani is adamant that his public and oft-repeated language on judicial restraint is consistent with the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court who will uphold Roe and its progeny.

That is why it is all the more appalling to see social conservative leaders embrace Giuliani’s campaign.

Oh dear:

"He hasn’t crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that he will cross any lines."

More premature victory dances in Iraq. Gerard Baker echoes the meme here. Orin Judd worries about returning Iraqi refugees from abroad:

“The downside is that it relaxes pressure on Syria.”

Gordon at Harry’s Place is less measured. It seems to me that we should be immensely grateful for what tactical successes we have gained in Iraq, for some Sunni rejection of Wahhabism, for Iran’s apparently better behavior, for what seems to be some fatigue from sectarian warfare, and for the record 175,000 troops now there. But it’s crazy not to realize that the deeper political question remains unresolved, that US forces have to decline in the near future, and that the best case scenario if we do not simply leave soon is an occupation with around 100,000 troops for a decade or more. We need to be open-minded in the face of empirical change; but just as clear about what we still do not know. The current calm could be the end of the beginning of the occupation; or the eye of a storm about to rage again. Mission Accomplished banners – however emotionally satisfying for some – are as dumb now as they were four years ago.

He parts company with the Decider on Plame.