Baker’s Real Game?

This reader may be onto something:

I think everyone, right and left, is making a mistake in taking the ISG Report’s policy recommendations at face value. What the ISG is really up to is "enlarging the problem," as it’s known in some policy circles.  By engaging other countries on the solution for Iraq, we make them part of the problem of Iraq.  Then, when the problem turns out to be unsolvable, we are no longer solely to blame.  The narrative then becomes, "The whole middle east – in the form of the Iraq International Support Group – tried to fix Iraq, to no avail. It’s not working, and we don’t want to participate in this larger process anymore.  So we’re leaving – not so much leaving Iraq, as leaving this useless regional forum.  The forum has failed, not the US, and it’s your problem now."

Remember, the Report also calls for substantial US troop reductions by 2008.  Why 2008?  Well, there’s this presidential election then … and two years is about enough for all that aggressive regional diplomacy to prove itself futile, so we can use it as cover to leave.

The ISG has also built in some solid CYA provisions. The Report’s recommendations have to be enacted in toto, Baker and Hamilton have argued, otherwise none of it will work. They know no commission report in the history of the Republic has been accepted in toto, and that this one won’t be, either.  When Iraq disintegrates, therefore, they can say, "Not our fault.  We told the president the only chance he had was if he adopted the whole report – and he didn’t."

Bottom line:  Taken at face value, the Report’s policy recommendations are useless – practically irrelevant – for quelling Iraqi violence.  But quelling Iraqi violence was never what the ISG set out to do.  Despite the silly "way forward" rhetoric, the real purpose of the ISG was to find us a way out – and a year or two of the guaranteed-to-fail diplomacy it recommends has as good a chance of that as anything.

Dobson on Cheney

He attacks her family but says it isn’t personal. Yes, it is, Mr Dobson. Then this:

Traditional marriage is God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That’s why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.

There you have the essence of Christianism: divine law translated directly into civil law.

Another Haggard

Reality strikes again:

The founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel has resigned after he said he had sexual relations with other men. Paul Barnes, who led the church for 28 years, told his congregation Sunday in a videotaped message that church leaders allowed The Denver Post to view. He and his wife have two adult daughters …

"I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy," Barnes, 54, said in the videotaped message. "… I can‚Äôt tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away."

Pray for him – and that the church will eventually realize the insanity of its insistence that homosexuality is a "choice".

Bush and the Movies

How the president ruined a great film, "Stalag 17." A brilliant piece of writing from Chris Kelly. Money quote:

While Stalag 17’s [American] prisoners are planning their escapes, and the Germans are trying to stop them, both sides keep referring to this dopey sort of rulebook called "the Geneva Conventions." These appear to be rules about the fair treatment of prisoners – I dunno, not torturing them, for instance – and even the Nazis obey them. Weird, huh?

A lot hinges on them, as a plot gimmick, but the characters seem to take them for granted. Even though it’s a war, there are still things you don’t do. Which, if only for story purposes, explains why the movie isn’t two hours of Otto Preminger holding William Holden’s head under water …

This isn’t supposed to take anything away from the Nazis as the villains of the piece –you can see it in the kommandant’s beady little burgher eyes that he wishes he could get around the Conventions – but the rules are the rules.

Even if the rules are – how did the Attorney General put it? – "quaint."

But here’s the thing. If you accept that the Geneva Conventions are just an annoying formality, like recycling – and I guess we do now – it ruins the whole movie. There’s no drama in it. Because the Third Reich isn’t even trying. The prisoners get mail from home. They get visits from the Red Cross. They aren’t even kept in cages. No one hoods them, or electrocutes them, or pretends to execute them, or places them in a "stress position" or walks them around on a leash. At one of the darkest points in the story, one of them is forced to stand for a few days without sleep. Like that even hurts.

Don’t the guards want their country to win? …

It’s almost like the hippies at MoveOn have it backwards. When it comes to protecting his country, Hitler isn’t George Bush.