The Dish

"I invite the faithful to wait for good news. We shall soon witness the elimination of the Zionist stain of shame," – Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that Ahmadinejad’s eschatology demands a second Holocaust for the Jews, and that is impossible to understand Hezbollah without seeing them as an instrument for this Persian Hitler to achieve his aims. That’s why, despite the horrifying toll on Lebanon’s infrastructure and civilians, the Israeli response does not seem to me to be disproportionate to the existential threat it faces – and would face even more starkly if Hezbollah became the emboldened tip of the Iranian spear.

But we still have levers – and one of them is the Iranian people. This piece in the NYT today struck me as fascinating. Iranians are not too fond of having their limited funds devoted to an Arab-Israeli battle. One reason for Iran’s provocation, it seems to me, is that the regime is unpopular and needs to foment polarizing battles with the Jews in order to retain legitimacy and support. Ahmadinejad’s gambles are as much a function of his internal weakness as his growing regional strength. That’s why continued outreach to Iranian civil society – and financial and emotional support to Iran’s democratic forces – is a vital component of a successful long-term strategy in the region.

(Photo: Marco di Lauro/Getty.)

Many, alas, are among the foremost vehicles for anti-gay bigotry in this country, and yet p.c. white gay activists won’t take them on. Their silence during the HIV and AIDS epidemic among African-Americans helped usher many black men and women into avoidable sickness and early death. Here’s an account of the damage one church did to one young gay black man, and how he has found a way to keep his faith and fight back soulfully. Money quote:

So here I stand. Speaking up, speaking out, and letting my glorious light shine like it should. I recently sat in the New York City hospital room of my dear friend Kevin Aviance after he was savagely beaten on an East Village street for being gay, and I thought to myself, Where are our leaders? Where are the people with influence who will stand up for me and my gay brethren? I am disappointed with our government. I am disappointed with our nation. But I am the most disappointed with my African-American ‘Christian’ brothers and sisters who stand proudly on their pulpits and use the Bible to regurgitate the very same hate rhetoric that was inflicted on the black community not so long ago.

This battle has only just started.

I’m of the view that Senator Clinton has a minuscule chance of becoming president of the United States. The big question for the Democrats right now is: who else? Mark Warner’s foreign policy weakness would be a fatal signal for the party to send about its approach to the war. Barack Obama has enormous talent but insufficient experience. Evan Bayh? Too bland. Feingold? Too left. Er, that’s it. That’s why Gore keeps re-emerging as a possibility. He’s the most viable candidate in my view – because he has a long record, pre-9/11, of hawkishness and expertise in foreign policy, simply couldn’t be more fiscally reckless than the Republicans, and takes the geo-politics of oil-addiction seriously. Still, he’s also a terrible candidate … and far better one step away from the limelight. An Obama-Gore ticket, with Gore as the veep, is a variation on the Bush-Cheney 2000 strategy – a young, untested pol with a daddy at his side. Michael Grunwald makes the argument here, and I don’t think it’s nuts.

(Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty.)

Louisville, Kentucky, 9.30 am.

And we’re at war. So a web page devoted to cats that look like Hitler is indispensable.

John Tierney makes an excellent point today (TimesDelete). Unlike me, he favors embryonic stem cell research (I have serious ethical qualms), but he’s not concerned about restrictions on federal funding for the research. Money quote:

Even before this week’s veto, anger over the ban has prompted states and private philanthropists to put up their own money. They’ve committed well over $3 billion to this research in the next decade, which might be more than Washington would have provided anyway ‚Äî and the federal money would have come with strings attached.

Stem-cell researchers can benefit from the freedom enjoyed by scientists who developed in vitro fertilization, which Washington also refused to finance because it was originally denounced as immoral. The absence of federal involvement sped progress by allowing unregulated private labs and clinics to innovate.

Libertarianism and federalism triumph again. And Bush, despite some of the heated rhetoric, isn’t actually proposing banning this stuff in the private sector or in the states. If I were a Bushie, I’d be asking why this point isn’t more generally understood.

A reader writes:

Thank you for noting the gay far-left’s uselessness and their preference for multicultural posturing over any action of substance. This is something I dealt with in college (admittedly on a much smaller scale) where some members of the main gay organization on campus spent an awful lot of time expressing solidarity with various minorities and developing countries, disdaining Israel, and generally ignoring any sort of actual gay-equality work that might have tangible results. Thankfully, they were not allowed to dominate.

I found this quote in the Gay City News article especially telling:

"Another point Long made in his memorandum last week is that those who believe the Mashad executions were based in homophobia are "imputing a Westernized ‘gay’ identity on these youths," the suggestion being that a level of cultural insensitivity and naivet√© is involved."

Queer studies may have their place, but now we’re seeing them as a way to dismiss violent homophobia. 

The damage the "queer studies" left has done to gay equality – and to the self-respect and intelligence of gay college students in this country in the past couple of decades – is profound. By conflating gay identity with far-left politics, they actually keep many gay students in the closet for longer than necessary. Their fondness for dictatorial leftists is legendary – symbolized by Michel Foucault’s embrace of the Tehran mullahs. And on the great civil rights question of the day – marriage equality – they have had nothing, nothing, to contribute.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, dusk.

This book will be huge. And it may be a turning point in the U.S. military’s resistance to the appallingly inept civilian leadership of the past few years.

"Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong," – CIA contractor, Christine Axsmith, on her restricted blog.

Axsmith just lost her job for writing those words. But she speaks for many in the CIA who cannot believe – let alone condone – what this administration has endorsed.