Category: The Dish

Yes, Bob Kagan does have some thick glasses on in reading Obama’s foreign policy speech. A reader spots a few twists:

Kagan seems to be playing fast and loose with Obama’s speech – trying to reshape it into a Kaganesque world view. For example, take this paragraph from Kagan:

Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin the world anew." This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign policy?

But Obama’s reference to rogue nations and muscular alliance is immediately coupled with the assurance that "we must use effective diplomacy" – something Kagan of course leaves out. The "strong nuclear deterrent" phrase is actually from this line: 

"We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads." 

So, from Obama’s promise of "no new nukes," Kagan finds more militarism. And the "seizing the moment" and "world anew" bits are from Obama’s final story about hope in America told through the story of his father’s acceptance to an American university – hardly a story suggesting a penchant for armed conflict.

Rather than being simply impressed with Obama, my guess is that Kagan is actually trying to redefine him to his own liking. Indeed, he’s taking the speech and pushing it through his own neocon prism.

Ya think? Obama, however, will be hard to characterize as a classic lefty in foreign policy, which may be enough to appease a chastened neocon like Kagan. Obama wants to redeploy out of Iraq – but he understands we cannot walk away from global engagement with Islamist terror as a whole. That’s the reed to which Kagan is clinging. It doesn’t make Obama a neocon. But it doesn’t make him Jimmy Carter either.

More poop. Bigger fans.

Cliff May scoffs at AQ’s Number Two saying the following:

We ask Allah that [U.S. troops]  only get out of [Iraq] after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson.

Now, of course, Zawahiri is full of it. But one thing we haven’t done enough in this war is think through the mind of our enemy. Does al Qaeda actually want us to stay in Iraq as a recruitment tool? It’s a question worth asking.

He told us what he thinks his election is about:

"The French have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behavior of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation."

A staggering 85 percent of voters turned out. It’s too early to know if Sarkozy really will tackle France’s welfare state and alienated Arab immigrants, and the EU’s sclerosis. And much will depend on the looming parliamentary elections. But Sarko is as close to a classical liberal in economics as you are likely to find in 21st century European elites, and hope springs eternal. Sarko is not the racist caricature that some have painted. He’s to the "left" of Segolene, for example, in favoring affirmative action for racial minorities. But he does symbolize a France unashamed of itself, its culture, and its resistance to the Islamist wave sweeping immigrant communities as well as allied Arab countries. The Guardian gets it mainly right:

The French have not voted in a man they particularly like. Ségolène Royal came across as a better person. But France has voted in a president it feels it needs. It has unequivocally decided that the cure for 12 years of drift is a sharp swing to the right, and this is exactly what it is going to get.

My gut tells me to expect more from Sarko rather tha less. In foreign policy, that’s almost entirely a good thing. Sarko is not a visceral anti-American, unlike many of his peers. In that sense, we have gained a new and stronger ally in the war against Islamism. Now to make that war more effective and intelligent.

(Photo: Protestors throw garbage on a street in the southern town of Toulouse, to demonstrate against the presidential election victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy. By Pascal Pavani/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I finally got around to reading the last installment of your dialog with Sam Harris. In a genuinely Christian fashion, you end on a note of hope (which, after all, is different than optimism).

I only wanted to add that as I was reading your epistle, I kept thinking of the words of Walker Percy: there is no better time to be a Christian than now, because it means so much more. This, I think, the fundamentalist rejects. They cannot delight in the strangeness and change and even dislocation of the modern world. They do not revel in the mystery of it all, that even in these times Christ is working in our lives. This is why fundamentalism, at least in part, becomes politically active – they think there are better times to be a Christian, and work to instantiate those times through the coercive machinery of the state.

I am so grateful to be a Christian right now, because it means so much. It is more of a struggle, but that only gives my faith more meaning. I sense in yourself that gratitude. And that, I submit, is why neither of us are fundamentalists. We agree with Percy. We are thankful to be believers here and now, for better or worse. This is a posture of humility and wonder, those things modernity pushes against. Contemporary Christians need a strong dose of gratitude for the gift of faith, rather than anger at being thrown into the modern world. Is that likely to come about? I can hope, but I’m not optimistic.

A reader writes:

Well I don’t know if it pleased the masses, but I quite enjoyed the animated Bayeux tapestry, especially the fact that the ‘naughty bits’ were left in (see 1:32 remaining for an example, upper left). They were always removed from my shchoolbooks.

They’ve also straightened out the chronology. Most of us in the history business for this period now think the tapestry is more complex than that, in fact being recounted in a series of ‘flashbacks’ if you will, showing reactions and the explaining ‘why, how’ and still being read across (as in the animation) rather than working from both ends into the middle and repeating itself as older scholars were wont to believe.

Of any interest? I believe so, in that it’s one of the first visual ‘reportages’ that we have of an event from both sides’ points of view and already there were calls for it being media manipulation, which of course it is. With some raunchy porn thrown in for the kids!

The sad story of John Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum, undone by a society that changed more swiftly than he could. My take in the Sunday Times here. A reader remonstrates:

You made a lot of good points today, but I think you’re insensitive to one aspect of this:  it’s all very well to say that today’s Britain has become largely tolerant of homosexuality, but this is clearly not the case in many of the countries in which BP operates.  An openly gay CEO could have created enormous difficulties for BP in places like Saudi Arabia, for example.  So I think you have to look at the context of the oil world to understand fully why Browne could not exit his "glass closet".

I certainly buy the notion that it might have made his life more difficult. But I’m not sympathetic to the idea that a wealthy Westerner should compromise his integrity to appease Muslim bigots or Catholic bigots. If a man of privilege cannot confront prejudice, who can? And why should profit come before personal integrity?

Sarah Baxter notices a small trend.

A reader dissents from this post:

When you write about reconsidering the impact of the surge in September, I think that you’re missing (or glossing over) one important fact.  In September, no matter what the actual conditions are in Iraq, the talk shows and "news" programs will be saturated with Bush administration spokesfolks all touting the amazing advances that have been made since the surge started. Their statements will be amplified by a chorus of pundits and bloggers, with Hugh Hewitt and the crew at Powerline leading the charge.  Those who say that the "successes" are not as significant as Bush would have us believe will be denounced as BDS sufferers who simply refuse to accept the good news from Iraq.  Charges of appeasement and treason will be tossed about…in other words, we’ll be right back where we started.

The only way that this administration will be controlled is with a short leash and a stout club.  A concrete time line, strictly enforced by Congress, is the only way we’ll get out of Iraq before 2009. The Democrats need to pass a short-term funding bill and then they need to send the bill with the time lines back to the President, making it clear to the people that it is Mr. Bush who is being pigheaded and unreasonable.

Planned Parenthood’s take is here (and, yes, I know it’s a spoof).

"I am Qing Liu — Asian and queer, poor and artist, and many other things. Everything others claim I am entitles me to a question. And the one question I have been working constantly to raise is, What exactly is gay now?" – a Brooklyn artist, New York Times today.