The Dish

Dahlia Lithwick homes in on why Justice Anthony Kennedy is such an important figure for the future of conservatism:

[I]n spite of the lofty intellectualism and the big words, this speech captures my imagination and that of the assembled crowd for its two quintessential Kennedy traits. The first is the vast sprawl of his imaginative world. He travels the planet and reads widely and he attends lectures on water purification. Then he applies all that knowledge to his conception of the law. And whether you like that expansive scope, listening to him is still a tonic to the smallness and smug certainty that has characterized our political leadership in this country for the past six years. It offers a welcome break from the hermetically sealed constitutional worldview of some of his detractors. Kennedy is a legendary agonizer. But his comments here reveal the extent to which that agony is not an end in itself. His sense of justice and equality is a work in progress, informed by what he learns from people all over the planet who know more than he does. There’s something reassuring in his sense that the world is a fluid place.

That sense – of the fluidity and inconstancy of everything – is the mark of a particular kind of conservative, an Oakeshottian attempt to find balance in doubt, and freedom in the minimal constraints of a rule of law that is as neutral between varying claims as possible. It is so different from the theological certainty that now passes for conservative doctrine. But "conservative doctrine" is an oxymoron. The point of political conservatism as I understand it is that it offers no doctrine, just the wisdom of a tradition resting, provisionally, on doubt.

Today’s the day. Full recrimination coverage later.

It’s revealing of so much:

Tom Ricks, author of "Fiasco": I asked one officer why are you talking to me about these things, and he looked down at his hands, and he said because I have the blood of American troops on my hands. And I said what do you mean? And he said because when I said to Rumsfeld we need that division, and Rumsfeld said no, I gave up. I compromised. And he said U.S. troops died because of that. And he said that’s why I’m talking to you.

Hugh Hewitt: And you can’t name him, though?

TR: No.

HH: Well, you’ll pardon me, Tom, Mr. Ricks.

TR: And he was practically crying as he spoke to me about this.

HH: Yeah, I’m just not going to buy that.

So Hewitt accuses Ricks of lying. Because if the truth about Rumsfeld’s criminal incompetence has to compete with Hewitt’s "no-mistakes-were-made" Caeasarism, then the facts be damned and the reporter’s a liar. Ricks or Hewitt? Reality or ideology? I link. You choose. A reader notes another quote from Hewitt, which is just as revealing. He seems to believe that all the criticism of this botched war is due to some sort of conspiracy:

The "money quote," as you say, is this from Hewitt:

"A cadre of Clinton-era senior brass, who did not see it coming, it being the Islamist world war, got bitter and angry at having been passed over and pushed aside by the 9/11, post-9/11 Pentagon, and they have spent the next five years doing their best to undermine this administration, using reporters like you who are good, to carry out that story, and amplify every mistake, and there are many, and to downgrade every success, and there are many, in a continued war against the people who tossed them out, and perhaps against their own conscience for not having seen it coming. Your response?"

Throughout the interview, Hewitt deals with the overwhelming evidence that he is wrong by, first, using a quibble about some fraction of the evidence (here, that some of the sources are anonymous) to cast doubt on all of it; and second, by accusing everyone of pursuing the same kind of partisan agenda that he himself is. There are no facts, to him. There is just a fight, and if you say something that supports the other side, you’re on it.

Here’s Ricks’ response:

"It is not partisan, it is not a bunch of burn-out generals. It is the military trying to do the best it can in an extremely difficult situation. And to disregard it and slap it aside, if you’ll excuse me, I think is aiding and abetting the enemy."

Finally Ricks is giving Hewitt the medicine he so regularly dishes out to others. I think of Hewitt as an American version of Baghdad Bob – you remember, the guy who insisted that U.S. forces were defeated even as U.S. shells were pounding in Baghdad behind him. No, I don’t mean the analogy literally – just in so far as it reflects the Christianist inability to deviate from received dogma, even when confronted with empirical reality. Hewitt is a very smart, completely partisan propagandist. Once you understand that, the rest fits into place.

Chicago, Illinois, 7 pm.

First they were for a cease-fire; now they’re against it.

Yes, we knew they were screwed up. But some Shiite Islamists in Iraq are allegedly killing shepherds because they have not put modesty "diapers" on their goats! The goats are too tempting for Muslim males, it appears.  Well, compared with the walking black tents they force their women into, goats are indeed quite fetching. The logic of religious fundamentalism is nothing if not relentless.

Why is this war different from all other wars for Israel? The answer lies in Bernard-Henri Levy’s essay in Sunday’s NYT magazine. For the first time, we’re not really discussing a conflict over land or territory or even the treatment of individuals. We’re not talking about Arab nationalism. We’re not talking about the Palestinians. We’re not even talking about the political existence of the Jewish state. We’re talking about the divine mandate that the Islamists believe they are following, an eschatological struggle toward the End-Times, where the Jews must be destroyed as a people and as a sovereign state in order for the Apocalypse to occur. In this, Pat Robertson and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are in complete agreement. The trouble is: Robertson can be dismissed as a corrupt kook; Ahmadinejad has some serious weaponry and a state under his control.

I wouldn’t dismiss Bernard Lewis’ noting of the ominous repetition of the date of August 22 by Ahmadinejad – and the Iranian president’s breathless predictions of a liberation coming soon. Although we have no hard evidence that Nasrallah has been acting according to Ahmadinejad’s wishes, their worldview is interchangeable. I would not be surprised if the Lebanon skirmish is a prelude to something much more ambitious. Syria’s foreign minister – a more cynical actor – has already opined that a war with Israel would be "most welcome" from his point of view. The notion that a group like Hezbollah can be "persuaded" by the Siniora govermnemt to give up their goal of exterminating every Jew in the Middle East – when it is the primary reason for their existence – is ludicrous. We should hold fast to the U.S.-French cease-fire deal and let Israel do its best to degrade its mortal enemy in the meantime. If conventional missiles can be launched today, have no doubt that, with Ahmadinejad’s support, non-conventional weapons will be used some time in the future. Why should Israel make itself vulnerable to WMD extinction from a few miles outside its borders?

This is what happens when religion takes over politics. Rational negotiation becomes impossible; victory becomes a theological mandate; no end becomes feasible except conflict; and in this case, some of the actors actually want that conflict to be apocalyptic. We have to understand the fundamentalist mindset we are grappling with. It is not rational in worldly terms. It is other-worldly – and rational only under those theological constructs. For those reasons, it is the biggest threat to Western freedom since the totalitarianisms of the last century; and easily the most mortal theat to Israel since its founding. It cannot be disarmed or reasoned with; it can only be defeated.

(Photo: Oded Balilty/AP.)

1994 may be repeating itself – according to this WaPo poll. Good. If any Congress deserves being thrown out in dramatic fashion, this one does.

Now we know its creator is an anti-Semite, where is the new debate about his movie? Where are the MSM explanations of why so many at the time viewed it as an anti-Semitic film? Where are the analyses of its anti-Semitic origins, as in the "visions" of Anne Catherine Emmerich? Where are the investigations of Gibson’s large investments in uber-orthodox churches, with anti-Semitic overtones? This incident was not about one drunken celebrity. It was about one the biggest pop-cultural events in recent history, a water-mark in the Christianist movement’s assault on the culture at large. It matters as a cultural and moral issue whether the Christianist movement did indeed give its imprimatur to rank anti-Semitism. Tim Rutten asks all the right questions here. The architects of this poisonous movie’s success still have not been brought to account.

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear … To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments, which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye." ‚ÄîEdmund Burke, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful."

(Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP.)