The Dish

I wonder how significant a development this is? According to the Washington Post,

As Marines step up preparations for military offensives on two major Iraqi cities, a number of Sunni Muslim leaders are forwarding a plan to establish the rule of law in those areas through peaceful means, with the promise of reducing the insurgency across a large swath of the country. Some of the groups leading the bid have encouraged violent resistance in central, western and northern Iraq. The groups say they will withdraw their support for violence if Iraq’s interim government can reassure Sunni leaders wary of national elections, which are scheduled for the end of January.

If this pans out, it would be an enormous breakthrough. Re-taking a Falluja is an essential task for Iraq’s transition, and it should be done by military means if necessary – but defeating the insurgency also needs a political arm. Far, far better for the Sunni elites to turn on the terrorists and extremists than for the U.S. to have to bear that political burden. I must say this is by far the best news in a very long time – and I wonder whether it emerged because of Bush’s decisive re-election. The Post story said the offer had been made “last week,” although such a shift must have been in the works long beforehand. The imminence of the attack on Fallujah must have been the key precipitant, but I wonder if November 2 sealed the deal. If it did, it’s a retroactive endorsement of the pro-Bush pro-war camp’s position. I hope I get to eat my words about the danger of recent developments in Iraq. I really do.

Isn’t it amazing that this mob boss will actually die in his sleep in a hospital bed? How many mafia bosses get to do that? Only the truly brutal ones. With the passing of this murderer, some hope begins to emerge in the Middle East.

A MORE CONVINCING EXIT POLL: Here’s a PDF for the L.A. Times’ exit poll. It shows only 17 percent of gays voted for Bush, with 81 percent for Kerry. That makes more sense to me.

I have to say that the more you look at the data, the less convincing it is that Bush won based on a religious right, anti-gay swing. Glenn has more details. One other thing: there were three swing states in which anti-marriage amendments were on the ballot. In Michigan and Oregon, the bans on gay unions passed, and Kerry still won. Ohio was the exception. If the GOP decides that the lesson of all this is to press on and make anti-gay amendments their signature issue, they will over-play their hand. Especially on the federal level. After all, isn’t the logic of state amendments a federalist one? Let each state decide. Don’t nationalize this issue one way or the other.

The assault on Falluja is about to begin. It’s worth putting aside all our divisions at this point in praying that our forces succeed with the minimum of civilian casualties.

In Canada, yet another jurisdiction grants equality to homosexual citizens. It’s all but the entire country now. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the legislature tilted critically toward marriage equality.

“So lots of pundits, including you, have been attributing Bush’s success nationally to his having excited the base over the gay marriage issue. In particular, the strategy of using the ballot initiatives in 11 states, thereby dragging religious conservatives to the polls to vote against marriage and at the same time check the box next to Bush, is regarded as having been particularly effective.

That is, of course, fiction. Bush improved his share of the popular vote by 3.2% from 2000 to 2004 (47.9 in 2000, 51.1 in 2004). Now how did he do in the states which had anti-marriage ballot initiatives?

Arkansas +3.0%
Georgia +3.3%
Kentucky +3.1%
Michigan +1.8%
Mississippi +2.2%
Montana +0.7%
North Dakota +2.2%
Ohio +1.0%
Oklahoma +5.3%
Oregon +0.8%
Utah +4.2%

Only in two states (Utah and Oklahoma) did he gain a significantly higher vote share than he did nationwide. Maybe comparing to the national popular vote is misleading, so let’s compare each of those states to a neighboring, politically-similar state which did not have an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot:

Missouri +2.9 (AR +3.0)
Florida +3.4 (GA +3.3)
Tennessee +5.7 (KY +3.1)
Wisconsin +1.5 (MI +1.8)
Alabama +6.0 (MS +2.2)
Idaho +1.2 (MT +0.7)
South Dakota -0.4 (ND +2.2)
Pennsylvania +2.0 (OH +1.0)
Texas +1.8 (OK +5.3)
Washington +1.2 (OR +0.8)
Wyoming +1.2 (UT +4.2)

Again, not much. In only 3 cases (UT-WY, ND-SD, and OK-TX) did Bush improve a lot more in a state with an anti-marriage initiative than he did in the state with which it was paired. And, in the case of North Dakota, the hotly contested Senate race in South Dakota may have skewed things a bit; a better comparison might be Nebraska, where Bush was +3.0% better in 2004 than in 2000, a better improvement than what he got in North Dakota.
That leaves two states, Oklahoma and Utah, which had an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot and in which Bush’s vote share improved more both relative to the nation as a whole and relative to the neighboring state selected.
It is certainly possible that the fact that the Bush administration raised the issue to the level to which did led to increased turnout among religious conservatives nationwide, which then resulted in Bush’s overall improved vote share over his 2000 performance. However, one would also expect that this vote share improvement would have been particularly high in states in which the marriage issue was particularly relevant. On the contrary, there is no evidence that suggests that the strategy of putting the anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot in several states did anything to improve Bush’s performance in those states.”

No, I’m not letting go of this story. When a film-maker in a liberal Western country is shot, has his throat cut and then has a long manifesto pinned into his flesh with a knife in broad daylight, more people need to be concerned. Now it turns out that the murderer, who had completely blended into Dutch society, belonged to the same Islamist cult as Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the terrorist now at large in Iraq. The cult is called Takfir Wal Hijra. Here’s a useful Dutch blog on the case. Money quote:

TIME wrote about Takfir Wal Hijra: ‘Takfir wal Hijra is a sort of Islamic fascism.’ However, even more interesting is the assertion that Takfir Wal Hijra apparently allows its members to appear non-radical, and even non-Islamic, if the mission requires it: ‘The threat of Takfir is that its cold, heartless killers could easily be the boy or girl next door. Takfir Wal Hijra members are permitted to disregard the injunctions of Islamic law in order to blend into infidel societies. In other words, Takfirs can have sex with loose women, drink alcohol, eat pork and do whatever else they feel is appropriate to advance their mission.’

That was also true of the murderers of 9/11. How conveeenient. The note – written in fluent, literate Dutch – is chilling. Here is part of its message. Remember that it was pinned into someone’s flesh with a knife, and also threatened another person, Dutch parliamentarian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

I know for sure that you, Oh America will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.

What part of that do we not understand?

Some smart thoughts about why Kerry lost. Money quote:

Did the Kerry campaign really imagine that they could out direct-market Karl Rove? By buying into the 17-state strategy, they walked right into Rove’s trap. By reducing the battlefield, they enlarged the Bush campaign’s tactical brilliance. The key to defeating Bush in the biggest national election since 1968 was to nationalize the race, not localize it. And the way to do that was to do it, with national campaign advertising, national campaigning and a direct national appeal that said: this is not Florida’s election or Ohio’s election, this is your election. You pay taxes, you have a right to be heard. I will not disenfranchise you. I will not marginalize your vote.

Well, the real national strategy was simply anti-Bush. Strong enough to get you to 48 percent. Not strong enough for the rest.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “You are wrong. Gays were NOT the issue. I’m a born again Christian, (raised Baptist, then Pentecostal!) Morals were my deciding factor also. Not anything to do with “gay” I live next door to San Francisco and have gay family and dear friends since 1976. BEFORE it was cool. BEFORE it accepted like it is today, I have had 4 friends die of AIDS.
The morals I cared about? A president who meant what he said. A man who is faithful to his wife. A man who doesn’t pander to Hollywood. A man who is not ashamed to say he prays and give credit to a higher power, who helps him. A man who doesn’t try to please all the people all the time. A man who shares my deeply held belief about freedom and what a GREAT country America is, and someone who knew Saddam Hussein has murdered 400,000 innocent men, women and children. I did not care if there were weapons of mass destruction, Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction. We are better off today, with this man gone from power, who can argue that? Who are these people that say we should have not gone in there, I thought we should of done this YEARS ago.” I hope this emailer is representative (although I fear she is not of many in the organized religious right). I agree with much of it. And I’m sick and tired of having the notion of homosexuality being disassociated from “moral values.” Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. And the fight for gay marriage is about celebrating the difficult moral tasks of fidelity and love and commitment and responsibility. I wish we gays could find common cause with more Christians in exactly this kind of endeavor. And I know that many of us have. But the fear of both sides has caused this great and painful rift. I pray that enough people of good will can overcome their fear and help to heal it.

Say this about Clinton: he always understood how to triangulate. The president who doubled the number of gay discharges form the military, signed the ban on HIV-positive immigrants, and jumped energetically on the Defense of Marriage Act, told Kerry to back marriage and civil union bans for gays in the campaign. Kerry, to his enormous credit, didn’t go there. But then Kerry never presided over the execution of a retarded man for his own political purposes either.

L’ETAT, C’EST W: “And it has happened abroad, as well, where the president’s opponents and enemies – which is to say America’s opponents and enemies – must now be pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth with frustration and resentment.” – Bill Kristol. He ends his piece of triumphalism by quoting Danton. What does it tell you about what’s happened to Burke’s conservatism when its current advocates are citing French revolutionaries as inspiration? What next? Robespierre? Lenin?

DESERT CIVILIZATION: Check out this fawning account of the life of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. My favorite snippet:

His skills as a mediator were celebrated throughout the region. They had been honed during a long apprenticeship as Ruler’s Representative in the Eastern Region of Abu Dhabi, lasting from 1946 until he took over as Ruler in a bloodless coup 20 years later. His sense of honour became a trademark. He never betrayed the solemn fraternal oath he and his brothers swore before their mother Sheikha Salaama not to murder each other.

What restraint!

“‘Ach,’ says Oliver James, the clinical psychologist. ‘I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s and thought, ‘Why doesn’t anyone see where this is leading?”” – from the Guardian today.

ANOTHER EMAIL: An important point:

We are often caught up in a moment to see how good we really have it. I am one who believes that civil marriage is the ONLY way to have equal rights for gay Americans in the US. That said I am not the least bit surprised with the losses in all 11 states — I expected it!
We live in a wonderfully diverse country, and I know that some do not appreciate my “lifestyle”, but that has not hindered me from having a satisfying life. There are many forms of bigotry and hatred, we just can not allow those fears to blind the path to success. I am now 45 years old — If you would have told me back in college (1980) that I would be living openly as a gay American, with a successful career and a wonderful partner of over eleven years – I do not think that I would have thought that possible.
Social change is a gradual process– different in every society – push too hard and you get “don’t ask don’t tell” – or the hateful “Defense of Marriage Act” – and now the the current losses. John Kerry or the Democratic party is not the place that gay America should be placing all their faith in the future — they will surely be disappointed. Bill Clinton signed ‘don’t ask don’t tell” twelve years ago! – A huge setback.
I for one, am very grateful for the social freedoms that I have, and look forward to the expansion of them that will naturally come in the future. I have nothing but optimism on this front, and fully except to see civil marriage in my lifetime.”

I agree with much of this. We have to strike a balance. We should not minimize or excuse the base appeals that the GOP have been making. But we should also realize how far we’ve come. Even this emailer understates it: We do have civil marriage in his lifetime. Gay couples married today in Massachusetts are, under state law, as married as any heterosexual couple. Even this president has now broken with his social conservative base and endorsed civil unions for gay couples. Rather than demonize him, we have to hold him to his word. The world is not evenly divided between those who totally accept gay relationships and those who “hate” us. It’s far more complicated, and many, many voters for Bush do not share the loathing of the far right. We cannot and should not alienate these people. That’s what Bill Bennett wants. Most fair-minded people are on our side in the end. Yes, this is painful. Yes, it is frightening. But the broader truth is far more hopeful. I’ve said it before; and it’s worth repeating: This is America. Equality will win in the end. If we keep the faith. If we refuse to accept the cynicism of those who would use our differences to win power. In the end, they have power. But we have the truth. And that’s all that really matters in the end.

LETTERS BONANZA: Don’t miss today’s Letters Page – full of some of the smartest feedback on the web.