The Dish

"Quod vides perisse perditum ducas" – Catullus.

"What you see is lost, set down as lost."

(Photo: Hadim Izban/AP.)

Specter says he’s open to new legislation restoring the most basic of individual liberties. If the Democrats have the balls to restore our constitutional order, I may have to stop being an independent for a while. 

Julian Sanchez scans the reactions to Brink Lindsey’s recent TNR essay. Bummer.

Here’s their view:

So let’s add up the "realist" proposals: We must retreat from Iraq, and thus abandon all those Iraqis – Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, and others – who have depended on the United States for safety and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon and the very idea of an independent Lebanon in order to win Syria’s support for our retreat from Iraq. We must abandon our opposition to Iran’s nuclear program in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq. And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.

A little melodramatic but: Yep. That’s what Kagan’s and Kristol’s beloved administration has brought us to. And by supporting it so ferociously for so long, it is what Kagan and Kristol have also helped bring us to. Do they have any serious alternative? More troops. And if Bush won’t send or the US cannot find or America will not support more troops? What will K&K say then?

Here’s what they will never say: that they bear serious responsibility for this foreign policy catastrophe. In the world of the Bushies, it is always, always, always someone else’s fault.

Manhattan, 3 am, jackhammers at full volume.

A reader writes:

Thanks for your post regarding Ann Althouse and her Grand Blinking Conspiracy and the death of habeas corpus. Isn’t it just fabulous watching 800 years of jurisprudence and a cornerstone of Western civilization get treated like so much birdcage liner?

This shouldn’t be a surprise though. Where communism is the endpoint of leftist extremism, fascism is the endpoint of the extremist right. In either case, the State is all and the individual but a footnote. I think the Founders must be crying in Heaven right now.

I do think Godwin’s rule needs to be amended somewhat in the age of Cheney and Bush. And I do think the logical consequence of the denialist far right at the moment is indeed closer to Schmitt than to Burke.

A reader writes:

If a European superpower had invaded the United States after the first battle of Bull Run, determined to save us from our own Civil War, what could the superpower have done? How would Americans of the North and South have responded? If we can’t answer those questions satisfactorily even with the benefit of 160 years of hindsight and a clear understanding of our own history and culture, I see no chance – none – that we can make it up as we go along in Iraq.

Chuck Hagel and others are correct: there is no military solution to Iraq. At the most basic level we can’t even identify an "enemy" against whom the fresh troops wold be engaged. The lure of adding more troops is twofold: it is the simplest option available to us, at least in the short term; and it offers those who supported the invasion in 2003 the hope of being vindicated in some way. The drawback is that, like everything we have done in Iraq, it has no basis in reality. The ISG report is a good starting point for tugging the American government back to a reality-based view of the world. Let’s not go backward.

Another reader grinds the point home:

You wrote:

"He needs to embrace much of Baker-Hamilton and add more than 50,000 and probably closer to 75,000 new troops into the theater – in the next three or four months."

Madness. Shinseki said it would take 500,000 troops to do what you and McCain want to do. Nothing has changed since he said that. (Actually, things have changed: more troops might be needed now than were needed three years ago).  75,000 would bring us to less than half that total. Unless the U.S. wants to re-invade Iraq with a grand coalition and half a million men, it should leave.  All the evidence is in. Unless we are prepared to follow the original, accurate recommendation, then we should bite the bullet and get out.

I see no other viable option at this point. Our goal must be to take measures to save those few Iraqis who can be saved.

(Photo: Mohammed Ameen/Reuters.)

Fred Kagan at least has a sharp critique of the ISG’s unrealistic realism:

Some of the most important training Iraqi Army units get today comes from operating side-by-side with American combat units in clear-and-hold missions, searches and raids. It is one thing to have trainers tell you what to do and watch you do it. It is another to participate in well-planned and skillfully-executed operations. Ironically, pulling American forces back from combat missions will actually remove one of the most important elements of training Iraqi forces.

A serious strategy to help the Iraqis establish security now would not only embed more American troops with Iraqi forces but increase the number of U.S. combat troops in Baghdad – and work with the Iraqis not just to clear insurgent areas, but to hold them once they’ve been cleared.

But do we have enough troops to do this? And why was this not done years ago? Oh, forget that last question, but rephrase it: given the level of talent in the White House, what are the chances of getting it right this time?

"Some reports are issued and just gather dust. And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it," – George W. Bush today.

Does he have to make Jon Stewart’s job that easy?

Here’s another one from December 7, 2001. I wonder if Garry Trudeau believed then, as I naively did, that this was impossible in America. Or whether he was just more prescient than I was. (Click to enlarge.)