The Dish

The only reasonable response to the Bush administration’s non-existent war-planning is outrage, mixed with incomprehension. Here’s the latest evidence of their negligence. Money quote:

“The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious,” warned an Army War College report that was completed in February 2003, a month before the invasion. Without an “overwhelming” effort to prepare for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the report warned: “The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America’s own making.”
A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush’s top foreign policy advisers, but there’s no evidence that anyone ever acted on it.
“It was disseminated. And ignored,” said a former senior intelligence official.

What I simply don’t understand is the silence of so many who supported this war about the appalling amateurism with which it has been conducted. I guess they think Kerry would be worse and are therefore hiding their criticism in public. But everything I hear in private is damning – even among the neocons. The question we have to ask is: if the Bush people screwed up Iraq this badly, how do we trust them in any future military operation? But that’s a question the neocons refuse to ask.

A BLEG: We’ve been inundated these past few days by Republicans bemoaning John Kerry’s alleged gay-baiting in this campaign. Bob Novak, Bill Kristol, Bill Safire (whose appalling column today I’ve just done fisking), the entire NRO crew, and on and on. They’ve referred to Kerry’s comments in clear and bold terms: “indecent,” “shameless,” “outrageous.” I have a simple question. Does anyone have a single leading Republican voice objecting to Republican Senate candidate Jim DeMint’s statement that gays should be barred from teaching in public schools? Has any leading conservative criticized the RNC flier claiming that a vote for Kerry would mean banning the Bible and forcing gay marriage on the entire country? Has any leading conservative columnist criticized some of the anti-marriage state amendments because of their vast scope and banning of any protections for gay couples? I noticed that Jay Nordlinger did object to Alan Keyes’ description of Mary Cheney as a selfish hedonist. But did Kristol? Or anyone else? The Cheneys ignored it. I’m just trying to be fair here. I’m relieved that Bill Kristol cares so deeply about not demonizing gays. I’d just like to hear of a single instance in which he has said such a thing before. That would get to the core of his sincerity, would it not? Or his sickeningly shameless opportunism. I promise to publish in full any such previous Republican comments, bemoaning other Republicans’ gay-baiting in this campaign. So send ’em in.

“I’m not sure why, but after following your blog and others for many weeks, the latest attack from Alan Keyes just sent me over the edge. I just feel compelled to respond to the fundamental foolishness of this so-called “argument”. If his concern is the inevitability of accidental incest happening to children raised by gay parents because “[i]f you are masked from your knowing your biological parents, you are in danger of encountering brothers and sisters you have no knowledge of,” then why is it Keyes is not railing against the evils of adoption (which I’m sure the Pro-Life Republican constituency would just love)? Why is he not calling for a ban on all artificial insemination (especially from anonymous donors)? Does anyone believe for a second that gay marriage (which barely exists anywhere in the world, and that for only months now) is a primary driver behind these practices, which clearly are how this supposed risk would be introduced?”

Great point. Actually, I think adoption does logically violate the worldview of Keyes. If civil marriage is to be kept exclusively heterosexual because only a hetero couple can have biological kids, then why is civil marriage still allowed for those who adopt kids? Or those who are infertile? Or those who have no intent to have children? The anti-gay right have never answered these obvious questions. If your argument is based on biological nature, then adoption violates the most natural instinct of all: to protect your own genes. If the anti-gay right were motivated by reason, this would occur to them. But they’re not; and so it hasn’t.

Here’s a fascinating quote from Mark McKinnon, Bush’s media expert. Asked if he ever challenged Bush in argument or debate, here’s what McKinnon said: “‘Ah, yeah, sure.’ Then he paused, and laughed. ‘I prefer for others to go into the propeller first.'” And people wonder why Bush doesn’t get good advice or keeps making mistakes. And if it’s this bad now, can you imagine what he’ll be like if he gets a second term?

Kerry has a ten-point lead among likely voters under 30. But the most interesting finding is the following:

A full third (34 percent) of all young voters expect a draft to be enacted as a result of the war on Iraq, with expectations skewing higher among the youngest voters (44 percent of 18 to 21-year-olds).

For the record, I cannot possibly see how the Bush administration can achieve its global objectives without a big increase in military troop levels or a draft. But, of course, the relationship between what we need and what this administration is prepared to provide is, to put it kindly, a tenuous one.

NOW, INCEST: Alan Keyes goes on the attack again, saying children of gay parents will live in families where “incest becomes inevitable.” I await the outrage of Matthew Dowd, Lynne Cheney, Bill Kristol, Bill Safire, Mort Kondracke, Maureen Dowd, and on and on. Oh, wait. It’s only if you say a positive thing about gay people that you’re a homophobe. (Hat tip: Blueline.)

THE HOCKEY STICK LIVES! Crooked Timber blog has already tried to debunk the claims of the global warming piece I linked to earlier today. Hey, we believe in empiricism on this blog. We’re not the Bush administration. Make your own mind up.

ANOTHER CASE FOR BUSH: My friend and colleague Sarah Baxter says she’s a proud liberal voting for Bush – entirely on the war and Kerry’s insufficient cojones and intellect to wage it well. I understand her point entirely. But notice that even this pro-Bush piece concedes something the Bush people never will:

I’m bitterly disappointed by the way Bush has botched the post-war situation. The neoconservatives with the ear of the president wilfully underestimated Iraqi nationalist sentiments. I feel horribly ashamed about the degrading behaviour of American guards at Abu Ghraib prison. I am not alone, however, in both hating the mess and preferring Bush over Kerry as president.

I admire Sarah’s intellectual honesty. To look squarely at this administration’s spectacular errors and still prefer Bush to Kerry – is an honest position. Alas, it implies that Bush is capable of understanding, let alone correcting error, or that re-election won’t only entrench his own sense of infallibility.

Belgravia Dispatch makes a powerful argument. I’ll respond in detail soon. I should say that, despite the assertions of others to the contrary, I haven’t endorsed Kerry – and the fact that I haven’t, after my dismay at the staggering mis-steps of this administration, is an indication of how troubling I find his record in foreign policy. I take all Greg’s points in this regard.

TEAM AMERICA – FUCK YEAH: Parker and Stone are now indisputably the comic geniuses of their generation. The point of the movie is not nihilism – it’s sanity. Sanity against the moronic ra-ra pro-Americanism of many in the Bush camp, who seem blind to any empirical evidence, prudence, or skepticism in their attempt to protect us from Jihadist terror; and sanity against the moronic Sontagian left that fails to see any danger in the first place (except that from president Bush, of course). I doubt if Alec Baldwyn, or Arec Bardwyn as Kim Jong Il calls him, will ever recover from this brilliant skewering. Or the dumb-as-a-post Matt Damon. Or Hans Brix. The scene between the Swedish do-gooder and the little NoKo nutjob should be mandatory in every introductory class for international relations. I nearly bust a gut in the movie theater, to the consternation of the hairy one and a couple of companions. But then I’m a sucker for “r” and “l” jokes and I was brought up on “Thunderbirds.” The song, “Everyone has AIDS,” deserves to win an Oscar. And I say that as someone just a couple hundred T-cells away from AIDS. Fuck yeah.

MORE INCOMPETENCE: The evidence of how the administration has screwed up the management of the war in Iraq continues to mount.

Okay, so I know the piece was supposed to scare the living daylights out of anyone not already enrolled in Liberty University, but I was a little alarmed nonetheless. The good news is that Bush seems genuine about tax reform and social security privatization in his second term. Here’s hoping. The bad news is that he thinks he’s Moses. But what Suskind does innovatively capture is an evolution in Bush over the past four years. Remember the open-minded, engaged, querulous figure from 2000? We got a glimpse of him in the third debate, which may account for his blip upwards in the polls. But what you get increasingly from the president is an arrogance and contempt for critics that is bordering on dangerous. You saw this in the first debate when Bush looked genuinely shocked to hear anyone voicing criticism of his policies in his presence. That obviously hadn’t happened in a very long time. You see this in the thuggish ways in which opponents are removed from campaign events, jailed and fired from their jobs. You realize eventually that Bush’s cabinet is actually a royal court, in which criticism is simply treachery. In the broader political world, you’re either with this president in everything he does or you are a traitor, an unbeliever, a leftist, and an enabler of terror. That’s how Bush sees the world. And he wonders why has left this country even more divided than when he found it.

WEAKNESS AND DOGMA: This insularity, of course, is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. So there are no deficits; or they do not matter. There has been no increase in domestic spending because the president’s plans say so. There was no insurgency in Iraq, just a fgew ‘dead-enders’, And on and on. The reason Bush cannot name a mistake he has made is not because he is smart enough not to admit error in public. It’s because he doesn’t believe he has ever made a mistake. If you are God’s instrument, how could you? And notice the only mistake that came to his mind: he allowed a few non-believers into his inner circle. You can be sure that won’t happen again. I cannot be the only person of a conservative disposition in politics to be alarmed at this kind of blindness in a president. Most people become tempered by experience; they learn from their mistakes; they adapt and reflect and adjust. Not this president. If he is as sealed off from reality now, what will he be like if he’s re-elected handily?

THE STEWART INTERVIEW: Here’s the Crossfire interview with Jon Stewart. He’s so right.

Suddenly, there’s a big hole in theories of global warming – and it all has to do with a non-existent hockey stick.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Neoconservatives used to give two cheers for capitalism; now four or five seem hardly sufficient. They once promoted a hard realism in foreign policy, to counteract the pacifist idealism they saw among Democrats in the Seventies; now they flirt with an eschatological faith in America’s mission civilisatrice, to be fulfilled by military means. They once offered a complex view of bourgeois culture in its relation to economic and political life; now they are in the grip of an apocalyptic vision of post-Sixties America that prevents them from contributing anything constructive to our culture. How these eschatological and apocalyptic ideas about America can exist in the same breast, without some effort at reconciliation, remains a mystery to every outsider who glances at a neoconservative magazine today. They appeal, though, to political Straussians, whose hearts beat arhythmically to both Sousa’s [Stars and Stripes Forever] and Wagner’s [Gotterdammerung].” – Mark Lilla, in the second of two brilliant essays in the New York Review of Books. Lilla is a big defender of Leo Strauss’ life and thought, which makes his critique of what has become of “Straussianism,” especially in its current Washington life-form, all the more damning.

GALLUP: No, I don’t believe it. A reader reminds me that on October 26, 2000, Gallup reported that Bush was ahead of Gore by 13 percent among likely voters. Gore, of course, was slightly ahead on election day. I do think, however, that Bush seems to be gaining slightly. He did better in the third debate – by seeming far more comfortable with himself – than some realized. And the Mary Cheney flap must help him.

It must be great. I’m going tonight.

A terrific onslaught on the late French philosopher of nothingness.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The Republican leaderships in both houses of Congress brought this amendment to the floor. Anyone watching the debate would cringe at the dehumanizing and painful things said by Republican sponsors of the proposal about gay people.
All of the Cheneys have sat back as senators and members of Congress who stood up for their position against the constitutional amendment were attacked in campaigns across the country. In Texas, North Dakota, South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Carolina and elsewhere, Republican candidates are using the gay issue against Democrats who have done nothing more than vote to protect the notion of fairness and equality in our Constitution.
Where is the outrage of Dick and Lynne Cheney over this?” – Hilary Rosen, in the Washington Post today.

The Cheneys didn’t respond to Jim DeMint’s gay-baiting in South Carolina, or Alan Keyes’ direct insult of their own daughter in Illinois. They have not voiced objections tio a single right-wing piece of homophobia in this campaign or the anti-gay RNC flier in Arkansas and West Virginia. But they are outraged that Kerry mentioned the simple fact of their daughter’s openly gay identity. What complete b.s. In the short run, this hurts Kerry. Prevailing disapproval of homosexuality means that most people regard mentioning anybody’s lesbianism as an insult and inappropriate. But long-term, the Republican bluff has been called. The GOP is run, in part, by gay men and women, its families are full of gay people, and yet it is institutionally opposed to even the most basic protections for gay couples. You can keep up a policy based on rank hypocrisy for only so long. And then it tumbles like a house of cards. Kerry just pulled one card from out of the bottom of the heap. Watch the edifice of double standards slowly implode. Gay people and their supporters will no longer acquiesce in this charade. Why on earth should we?

Are the polls missing something big? Mystery Pollster doesn’t think so – yet.