The Dish

It’s become a racial cause celebre. Clive Davis provides the Brit overview.

Listen to the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki. In the Times of London, he strongly expresses a clear desire: to be given weapons and more training in order to unleash Shiite state violence against Sunni insurgents. His view of the next six months seems pretty obvious to me: the U.S. can help weed out Sunni insurgents in Baghdad, and he is prepared to make a few gestures against the more egregious death squads on his side. But after six months, he wants to be able to get on with the job of killing Sunni insurgents himself in defense of a Shia majority state:

Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: "If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them." …

Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, said that Mr al-Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, gave a warning that he was living on "borrowed time" and that American patience was running out.

Challenged on the point, Mr al-Maliki remarked acidly: "Certain officials are going through a crisis. Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the Government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi Government or American Administration. I don’t think we are on borrowed time."

How exactly would Maliki "lose his job"? The administration’s political strategy in Iraq is based on control it doesn’t exercize. And its military policy is based on a national government that does not exist. Apart from that, the White House has it all figured out.

(Photo: Brooks Kraft for Time.)

Together at last – as the Christianist-Islamist alliance deepens on the far right.

A reader writes:

I’m strongly anti-war, but I still wish Petraeus true success, sincerely – because I presume that the key existential goal now is to "pacify" a spot of active, pure hell on earth that we are partially responsible for. That pacification may include using deadly force and would be morally justified on just war grounds. The situation now is one in which not to act at all is immoral – but, it may be just as moral and practical to withdraw and let them face each other (Shia, Sunni, others) and make their own existential decision without us as an excuse anymore.

As the one writer said of the unjust war: we were not willing to fight to pacify, to occupy, to take control. We set this up for disaster and watched it. It will be written in history books: When Moqtata al-Sadr emerged early on, why was he not arrested soon (under rules of martial law; but handled humanely) by the new occupying force, detained as a potential terrorist and inciter to violence against other Iraqis? People often compare Japan to Iraq. Would MacArthur have tolerated someone like al-Sadr at large to pursue his course during the occupation?

Why did we not prosecute our victory and power? Why were we so cowardly or unwise or both to let him (and others like him) stand us down? These guys think GHW Bush failed to follow through. But the first Bush saw what follow-through would entail and did not start down that path. These guys did so and then surrendered the position.

In my view, history will show that this president never seriously prosecuted this war, never took his responsibility seriously, never provided sufficient resources, never even gave it his full attention. That became clear to me in 2003. I didn’t get it beforehand because I just assumed that any American president would understand the gravity of the decisions he was taking and would ensure that he took all means to guarantee victory. But this president didn’t. He ran this war like a distracted frat boy, irritated by the distractions it required, and outsourced its execution to two unhinged aides. In other words: he wimped out. Bill Kristol has the gall to call critics of the surge "boneless wonders.’ But there is only one truly boneless wonder these past four years, and he is still sitting in the White House.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)

Rochester Hills, Michigan, today.

"Bush too has tried to straddle the liberal-conservative divide, but he has wound up doing for the image of conservatism roughly what the movie ‘Deliverance’ did for the image of Southern hospitality. (I just watched the film again and kept thinking, ‘This is a real Red state!’)" – far right commentator, Joe Sobran.

Just in case this blog isn’t gay enough, a friend emails me the following pearls of wisdom from Hollywood Squares’ Paul Lynde. Hey, there’s a war on, and it helps to laugh now and again:

Q. Do female frogs croak?
A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.

Q. Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps.
One is politics, what is the other?
A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures.

Q. When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?
A. Paul Lynde: Make him bark?

Q. If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
A. Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.

Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?
A. Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn’t neglected.

Q. Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
A. Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?

Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh.

A welcome nod to constitutional democratic principles by the Bush administration today. The Schmittian conservatives are, naturally, appalled.

The bigotry and hatred being perpetrated by some Saudi-funded radical Muslims in Britain is slowly being exposed by the British media. Here’s a first installment of a documentary from UK’s Channel 4. It’s enlightening and terrifying. These people are religious fascists; and they form a clear and present danger to our freedoms. You can watch the other installments here.

One of the chief mullahs defends himself here.