Category: The Dish

David Bernstein argues:

If Israel suddenly was at complete peace with its neighbors and was no longer an issue of foreign policy concern, I would bet that all of the Jewish neoconservatives would remain neoconservatives, and continue to promote neoconservative views on foreign and domestic policy.

Neocon bonus: Matt Yglesias defends Bill Kristol from reductionist charges of partisanship:

He’s clearly, a committed partisan Republican, but I think any fair reading of the record shows that his commitment to maximum military action all the time trumps petty considerations of partisanship.

"Human rights are part of what it means to be civilised. Locking up suspected terrorists—and why not potential murderers, rapists and paedophiles, too?—before they commit crimes would probably make society safer. Dozens of plots may have been foiled and thousands of lives saved as a result of some of the unsavoury practices now being employed in the name of fighting terrorism. Dropping such practices in order to preserve freedom may cost many lives. So be it," – the Economist. Amen. Live free or die was the mantra of Americans for generations. And yet the current one seems utterly to have forgotten it.

A reader notes:

Obama "intellectually lazy"?

That’s taking a page from the Rove playbook: Attack the most serious challenger on his greatest strength. Guess the Republicans are worried about him. What good news for Obama!

Bush and Rove are just longing for Clinton to win.

I visited Burma twenty years ago, on the eve of the last revolution in 1988. Anyone who has ever been there will tell you it is hard to imagine a ghastlier regime – a throwback to the worst of the twentieth century’s military totalitarianisms complete with insane social engineering, vicious violence against ethnic minorities, economic incompetence and pure, inhuman brutality. Having observed the revolution supressed once before, it’s hard to get one’s hopes up again. But this news is inspiring:

As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched Monday through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar’s biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

From the front of the march, witnesses could see a one-mile stretch of eight-lane road was filled with people.

Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

Here’s a helpful timeline of what’s been going on since August 13. Here’s a round-up of developments across the country. Long-suppressed ethnic minorities are joining the revolt. Here’s the best web aggregator I can find on the developments. Here’s an appeal for UN intervention. A medical doctor in the country prepares to treat those wounded by a potential crackdown. How to explain the junta’s restraint? Part may be a reluctance to take on Buddhist monks, who remain, like priests in Communist Poland, a source of widely accepted moral authority. The Chinese, who have stepped in to make money after the West placed sanctions on Burma, may also have put pressure on the regime not to create a blood-bath:

"The Myanmar Burmese government is tolerating the protesters and not taking any action against the monks because of pressure from China," said a Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol. "Beijing is to host the next summer’s Olympic Games. Everyone knows that China is the major supporter of the junta so if government takes any action it will affect the image of China."

That in itself is a hopeful sign: that the Olympics may prod China to a marginally more liberal foreign and domestic policy. I’m eager to find any first-person accounts of what’s going on. If you find anything online, please let me know.

(Photo:Buddhist monks march in protest in Rangoon, 24 September 2007, in the strongest show of dissent against the ruling generals in nearly two decades. More than 100,000 people flooded the streets of Yangon in two major marches that snaked their way through the nation’s commercial capital led by robed monks chanting prayers of peace and compassion. By AFP/Getty.)

One consequence of fighting a guerrilla war against an enemy with total contempt for the rules of warfare is that you find yourself slowly adapting his tactics to win. So it is no big surprise to learn this:

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

No possibility of that tactic going wrong, is there? One dimension of committing to an indefinite occupation of Iraq, which means an indefinite war against Jihadist insurgents, is how their depravity seeps back into the US military. We’ve seen what has happened with torture and abuse. Even if it hadn’t been authorized by the president, it’s likely some of it would have crept in because of the very nature of the enemy we are engaging. Fighting this war without having it corrupt us is the great challenge we face. It gets harder and harder the longer we stay.

They’re not happy with this position on the Federal Marriage Amendment, according to David Brody. He supports states’ rights. They don’t – when the states choose policies they disagree with.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"[Obama] detects an enormous weariness among Americans about their internal divisions in a time of war…"

There seems to be an assumption that politicians are divided, but Americans wish to be more united. The problem is: we are the divisions. There is no "us" (citizens) and "them" (national politicians). The pols reflect our divisions.

This is not to say that Obama’s gamble isn’t worth taking, nor that what he is doing isn’t noble. Obama is an exceptional man for all of the reasons you have articulated on your blog. But I am not convinced that Americans want to be brought together. They may not want things to be as divided as they are now, but we still are divided on many key issues. And we’re divided on what we should care about: economics vs values, for instance.

Remember: It was just 3 short years ago that 61 million people voted for GWB — well after it was evident that his presidency was a disaster.

The fact is, Hillary vs Rudy may be exactly what the electorate wants.

It seems to be what Bush wants.

Ravi Iyer, one of the researchers involved in the YourMorals test, along the lines of Jonathan Haidt, has responded to this blog’s curiosity about the test. He compared the scores on the test from NYT readers and from Dish readers. The results are pretty similar – with you being ever-so-slightly slightly more libertarian – and somewhat less pure – than the average NYTer. Then Ravi wondered what the results of self-described libertarians look like. Here’s the result:

Libertarians score roughly the same as conservatives on the harm and fairness scales; and roughly the same as liberals on the loyalty and authority axes. Libertarians are distinguished from liberals by being a little less concerned about purity. All in all, you can see how the current culture war puts libertarians in a very tight spot.

The Marijuana Policy Project reports the following:

For the fourth year in a row, U.S. marijuana arrests set an all-time record in 2006, according to the just-released FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. Similar to previous years, 738,916 or 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture, and marijuana possession arrests again exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined.