Category: The Dish

You know you want it.

"In the new book burning we don’t burn books, we burn discussion of them instead. I am referring to the ongoing collapse of book review sections at American newspapers, which has accelerated in recent months, an intellectual brownout in progress that is beginning to look like a rolling blackout instead," – Art Winslow, National Book Critics Circle. He has sparked quite a debate. And a campaign.

I do not know all the facts about the decision by the US military to bring extremely serious charges against an officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, who supervised the Camp Cropper detention facility. Camp Cropper was a site where torture and abuse occurred, as it did at almost every U.S. detention camp in Iraq. But Steele, of course, is not being charged with the war-crimes that took place there. He is being charged with treason. My own sources describe him as a man of integrity, a man who actually tried to treat detainees as human beings. Another James Yee? I don’t know. But I’m deeply skeptical of this accusation.

A scientist analyzes the language of Senator Clinton.

Another win for marriage equality in New England. Well, it isn’t exactly civil marriage, but it is a form of "spousal union" which gives all "the same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as married couples". The term "spousal union" strikes me as a breakthrough – a euphemism that isn’t really a euphemism. The bill uses both terms "spousal union" and civil union." Notice how this happened: by legislative action alone, in a conservative state, as a pragmatic measure, with humane and conservative intent. This is the path the national GOP chose not to take. History will not remember them kindly for it. It also seems to me that New England’s regional support for gay couples makes a reversal of the Massachusetts breakthrough even less likely than it was before. Now: California. The legislature has passed a civil marriage law. Why is a Republican governor now deferring to the state court?

Alex Massie, a former guest-blogger here, now has his own. Check it out.

Here’s classic b.s. from the prohibitionist lobby on pot:

National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow fears the problem is not being taken seriously because many adults remember the marijuana of their youth as harmless.

"It’s really not the same type of marijuana," Volkow said in a telephone interview. "This could explain why there has been an increase in the number of medical emergencies involving marijuana."

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Adminstration, marijuana was involved in 242,200 visits to hospital emergency rooms in 2005. This means that the patient mentioned using marijuana and does not mean the drug directly caused the accident or condition being treated, SAMHSA says. The number is up from 215,000 visits in 2004.

Notice the carefully parsed statement: "This could explain." And yet, there’s no evidence at all that it does actually explain anything, except perhaps that pot-smoking is enjoying a resurgence. (By the way: I wonder what the annual number of medical emergencies involving alcohol is. Not "could be", but is.) There’s no question that pot is stronger now than in the 1960s; there’s equally no question in my mind that any minor should be prevented from smoking it. But legalization and regulation could help restrict its use among minors, the way we do with nicotine today. And it could also help regulate its potency. But such measures would be a function of a rational drug policy, as opposed to the completely insane one we live under today.

Paparazzi are human slime. Baked beans are too good for them.

I realize Jonah Goldberg is debating the United States at the Oxford Union tonight. He’ll do fine, I’m sure. In fact, Jonah is a very Oxford Union debater. They love jokes, gags, self-deprecation. They also like conviction spliced in with it. Goldberg – when he’s on form – can pull all this off. And he’s up against some Islamist nutballs on the question of:

"This House Regrets the Founding of the United States of America."

If I were Jonah, I’d kick off with Burke. At some point, ask why they’re not debating in German. Above all, don’t be defensive. A tough Union crowd can sense fear.

It takes me back, of course, to a debate I set up there as president in 1983. The topic was: "There is no moral difference between the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union." As president, I was supposed to chair the debate, but I invited Caspar Weinberger and he accepted, and also invited E.P. Thompson, the leftist historian who was a big macher in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Thatcher government was facing an election, had a policy of no-engagement with CND, and talked Weinberger into withdrawing. I was pissed – in the American sense of the word. The debate was rescheduled after the election – so I got to debate in it. I took the losing side, as I always tried to in Oxford debates (far more fun to lose well than to win easily). But looking back, I see some resonances. I was very pro-Thatcher and pro-Reagan. I celebrated the arrival of cruise missiles in Britain with a champagne party at Oxford. About four people showed up. But I still opposed the notion that a democracy can do no evil in foreign policy. I do not believe that any country has a monopoly on moral good, and that the greatest countries are also capable of moral evil. That’s my Catholicism, I guess. But I do remember interrupting Weinberger in the debate with the following question:

"Does an immoral act become less immoral because we have the right to choose to do it or not?"

The answer was no. It still is. End the torture policy.

(Photo: Union bar and library by Kaihsu Tai.)

To his credit, Anderson Cooper has kept his focus on the most important story right now: Iraq. He’s helped by the talent and integrity of Michael Ware. Here’s a conversation they had yesterday that covers in a few sentences all the critical ground:

WARE: To hear American politicians talking about putting pressure on Maliki, a lame-duck prime minister who has no authority with his own people or his government, to force a reconciliation, that reconciliation is in nobody’s interests.

COOPER: Well, if not Maliki, what are the other options? Are there other options?

WARE: A great question, Anderson. The alternatives that are being considered are non-democratic. They point specifically to places like Pakistan and Egypt, where you have military strongmen with a quasi-democracy who first deliver security, and democracy comes after that.

COOPER: Where does the so-called surge – others say just escalation – where does it stand? How is it going? Too soon to tell?

WARE: Oh, way too soon to tell. But what I can tell you right now, that, in terms of Baghdad, if you want to look at it through a microscope, without looking at the rest of the country, the surge will have an impact.

But, at the end of the day, if America wants to win in Iraq, it would need to surge the whole country. But it can’t.

Read those last two sentences again. The truth is in front of our noses. Ware has been there for years. He’s a truth-teller, not a spin-merchant. One obvious sceanrio that hasn’t been fully addressed. If the surge fails to perform a miracle, the Bush administration will be loath to redeploy without some attempt to have a government with actual power. Will there be a coup? Are we going to try and find a Shiite Musharraf?