Category: The Dish

More evidence of the lack of there there.

The Pollack-O’Hanlon op-ed today about Iraq offers one new solid reason for optimism. It’s the following:

American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

If the military is becoming less sectarian, then that’s a big deal. Sorry, but count me unconvinced. Pollack’s only sources are American advisers and the "high command." Well: they would say that, wouldn’t they? Compare Pollack’s account with the statement two days ago from the man tasked to actually train the Iraqis:

The new American general in charge of training and equipping Iraq’s security forces said the hardest challenge was finding good leaders free of sectarian loyalties.

"You can’t grow a force this fast and have the right number of qualified leaders," Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik told The Associated Press on Saturday. "You can’t do it. This is a problem now, and it will be a problem for a good number of years." General Dubik said nonsectarianism was "much harder" to instill than teaching soldiers how to fight.

So who’s right? Pollack’s "American advisers" or the general tackling the problem itself?

I get the sense that Pollack has been snowed by a great Pentagon presentation. Or, as Matt notes, is just a sucker for his old friend Petraeus. But even Pollack has to concede this:

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

And so Pollack and O’Hanlon want to extend the surge into 2008. If that means keeping some forces temporarily in place to help local government emerge in a way that can, at least, impede al Qaeda, then few will disagree. If it means another indefinite commitment of US troops to occupying Iraq in the absence of any viable central government, then the answer must be a firm no. The benchmarks for the surge remain what they always were: has it created the conditions for a national settlement? If it has, there’s a reason to stay. If it hasn’t, we need to start getting out, in a way that protects, as far as possible, whatever local achievements we have managed to accomplish.

‘Plastics". "The Graduate."

The word that springs to mind is "clusterfuck."

I’m intrigued by the Latin mass, being a Second Council baby myself. But it seems to me that the likeliest result of the new shift toward the 1950s is the one sketched in the NYT on Saturday:

It’s easy enough to see where this is going: same God, same church, but separate camps, each with an affinity for vernacular or Latin, John XXIII or Benedict XVI. Smart, devout, ambitious Catholics — ecclesial young Republicans, home-schoolers, seminarians and other shock troops of the faith — will have their Mass. The rest of us — a lumpy assortment of cafeteria Catholics, guilty parents, peace-’n’-justice lefties, stubborn Vatican II die-hards — will have ours. We’ll have to prod our snoozing pewmates when to sit and stand; they’ll have to rein in their zealots.

And we probably won’t see one another on Sunday mornings, if ever.

One of the consequences of the collapse in the moral authority of the Catholic hierarchy, in the wake of Humanae Vitae and then the child and teen abuse revelations, is the inability to hold the Catholicity of the church together. The hierarchy does not command all of us any more. And then there is the suspicion that this kind of schism is actually deliberate, a way to deter the not-so-devout or traditional or politically conservative Catholics. It has worked and will continue to work. And the church will get smaller and smaller in the West.

You think you know his movies? Here’s a test.

Should the next YouTube debate not be on CNN but on … YouTube?

Jim Fallows has a great post on the eternal question of the press’s need for profitability and its public mission. I might add (cue massive slurpy suck-up sound) that I’ve written for a Murdoch paper for well over a decade every week (the Sunday Times). I’ve never had even a scintilla of a sense of any intervention from the gods. And I’ve written not a few controversial pieces.

Korca, Albania, 7.50 pm.

For a newly updated, global gallery of Dish readers’ window views, click here.

I keep posting them because you keep sending them and they’re great glimpses and reminders of some great movies. But I hope to wind things up in the next couple of weeks and then construct a page for all the clips and a voting mechanism. You’ll pick the top three movie lines of all time – and we’ll announce the winners the day after Labor Day. If you have one that hasn’t appeared yet, send it in. The YouTube clips should not be more than a couple of minutes long at the most – and those under a minute get priority. This is a blog. We don’t have all day.