The Dish

Even some of the French are getting it.

If you haven’t already, you gotta read Krauthammer this morning on Ted Kennedy’s derangement. Money quote:

You can say [Bush] made a misjudgment. You can say he picked the wrong enemy. You can say almost anything about this war, but to say that he fought it for political advantage is absurd. The possibilities for disaster were real and many: house-to-house combat in Baghdad, thousands of possible casualties, a chemical attack on our troops (which is why they were ordered into those dangerously bulky and hot protective suits on the road to Baghdad). We were expecting oil fires, terrorist attacks and all manner of calamities. This is a way to boost political ratings?
Whatever your (and history’s) verdict on the war, it is undeniable that it was an act of singular presidential leadership. And more than that, it was an act of political courage. George Bush wagered his presidency on a war he thought necessary for national security — a war that could very obviously and very easily have been his political undoing. And it might yet be.

Amen.

THIRD THOUGHTS ON CLARK: Thanks for the emails. Gee. I guess the point of blogs is to write things as they occur to you, to raise points, to argue with yourself and others, etc. This morning a number of people have contacted me to tell me all sorts of things about Clark. The most interesting came from liberals who have spoken with him and heard his private pitch. What he tells wealthy liberals is that he loathes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. He thinks terrorism has to be fought as a police operation. He believes the Iraq war was not just a misjudgment but a cynical political semi-coup. Then there’s this email:

You pose that “if” Clark is not coopted by the Clintons and McAuliffe, he might have a real shot at the nomination. He already has been so coopted, at least if the Safire line of commentary is to be believed. As for Clark’s debate appearance, and saying the right things on the deficit, etc., that’s what Rhodes Scholars, like Bill C., do the best! It’s part of the suck up technique that got them to the top. My qualms about Clark are that he, like Bill Clinton, doesn’t really believe in anything other than his own personal advancement. Clark, like Clinton, will say anything that the focus groups suggest is the flavor du jour in order to secure favorable media coverage, and eventually votes, to get them to that next higher rung on the advancement ladder. I suspect that this lack of real values may be what Gen. Shelton was referring to in his lack of character and integrity reference when Shelton predicted that Clark won’t get his vote.

I don’t know yet. But these are surely the issues about Clark we have to figure out. I was wowed by Clinton in 1991 for similar reasons. It took six weeks of him in office for me to realize my mistake. (Oh and by the way, the gay issue has nothing to do with my semi-open mind about Clark. I don’t trust Clark to do anything substantive for gay equality, just enough to keep the money coming in and a supplicant interest group at his disposal. That was Clinton’s mojo. And Clark has said nothing to separate himself from that kind of politics.)

Heaven knows I’ve found plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Wesley Clark. But I have to say I found him one of the most credible of the Democratic candidates in the debate yesterday. The reason is that I agreed with him, to a large extent. Compared to hysterics like Kucinich or programmed bores like Kerry, he came across as sensible, fresh, and his views were sane. There was blather – “I’m pro-health,” as if the Republicans are pro-disease – but I guess it’s no more absurd than Republicans claiming to be “pro-family.” He wouldn’t drag the troops home, unlike some of the others. He moved from not-terrible to positive in my book with this answer to the question of what he’d do that would be unpopular:

We’re going to focus it on deficit reduction. We’re going to put this economy back on a sound footing so we can not only pay our bills but meet the other needs that we have in education, health care, the environment and Social Security.

Yep, I know it’s vague. But mentioning deficit reduction at all as a priority was encouraging, especially after this administration’s complete insouciance about it. I think he’s full of it on Iraq, trying to have it every which way in retrospect, when he was far more sensible at the time. And I worry about his reflexive deference to allies. So I was actually reassured by Drudge’s quotes yesterday, where Clark comes across as a gung-ho hawk, an admirer of Powell and Rice and Rumsfeld. I agree with him that “President George Bush had the courage and the vision… and we will always be grateful to President George Bush for that tremendous leadership and statesmanship.” I couldn’t second highly enough his view that he was very glad after 9/11 that “we’ve got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice… people I know very well – our president George W. Bush. We need them there.” I’m delighted he has such a high regard for Ronald Reagan. If he’s genuine – and you have to remember he’s a Rhodes Scholar and they tend to say anything to suck up to whomever they’re talking to, in this case, Republicans – he’s preferable to any of the other Dems, except Lieberman and Edwards and Dean (who came off as nastier and vainer than ever).

A WINNING GAME-PLAN?: If I were advising Clark, I’d tell him not to attack Bush’s conduct in the war on terror, or impugn his motives or sully his reputation. What I’d do is say: “Thanks, Mr President, for your wonderful leadership. But the task you set out upon is best accomplished by others who do not carry with them the baggage you do on the international scene.” Then he’d lay out a plan to bring Iraq to democracy, nation-build in Afghanistan, and get tough on Saudi Arabia. At the same time, he’d get rid of the taxcutsfortherich, and appeal to the cultural center. If his early flakiness doesn’t turn out to be a real character flaw (a big “if”), and if the Democratic base can contain its self-defeating hatred of Bush (an even bigger “if”), and if he isn’t coopted by the Clintons and McAuliffe, then Clark definitely has a credible shot. The country wants to shift tactics in foreign policy but doesn’t want to repudiate the achievements of this administration. And people are worried about debt and jobs. The question is: how does Clark run against Bush in the primaries and co-opt parts of his record in the fall? Well, we’ll soon find out. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I’d prefer Clark to Bush under those circumstances. I’m just saying it’s an interesting scenario. And healthy for the country.

A heart-breaking suicide of another abuse victim of the Catholic Church. Pray for him.

DERRIDA EMAILS: Here’s one that provoked a chuckle:

“Re: your post on that totally incomprehensible “Philosophy in a Time of Terror” Habermas Book. That stuff is now so funny to read but it was not so funny when it was crammed down our throats in the “Communications” Dept. at university. Mein Gott in Himmel. I read your excerpt three times just to see if it was possible to grok ANY part it.
Now that I am out in the world and making good use of college-learned skills in my pro career I can look back at the madness of way bitchin 80’s college life with its omnipresent bevy of undergraduate teaching aides who conducted their earnest but indecipherable lectures by day dancing to The Cure or Violent Femmes by nite. I learned other skills in college too, such as “don’t feed marshmellows to grizzly bears” and “if you’re pulled over say the car belongs to her dad and of course she’s 18.” But I digress.”

On the other hand:

No fair giving Derrida your Poseur Alert award! He’s the uber-poseur–giving him this award would be like having an award for pretentious biblical speech and then awarding it to the Bible.

More feedback from the sharpest readers on the web can be read here.

How intensely disappointing to find some fiscal conservative aparently whining about the money needed to rebuild Iraq. Don’t they understand what is at stake here? A successful outcome in that poor country is vital for the strategic success of the war on terror and terror-states. Penny-pinching in that context is about as counter-productive and self-defeating a policy as can be imagined. You want to ensure costly military spending for decades in the Middle East? Then short-change the Marshall Plan in Iraq. Between some Democratic candidates’ neo-isolationism and the Republicans’ waking up to fiscal discipline on the one project the world desperately needs, it’s hard not to get truly depressed these days. Of course, this money should be scrutinized. But if the Republicans won’t back the president up on this, who will?

If you heard me debate Dennis Prager today on his radio show and want to read the written dialogue posted earlier this year, here it is.

You read about the collapse of the BBC here first. Now, even the NYT is conceding it. It’s a decent article, marred only by citing Will Hutton as some kind of objective source. He’s the British Paul Krugman. But without all that Enron money.

THE OTHER FRENCH: I’ve been criticized (and rightly, perhaps) for focusing too much on France’s reflexive anti-Americanism. But of course not all of France is that decadent or unthoughtful. A blogger elaborates. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

GILLESPIE’S FALLACY: There’s some strange thinking going on among the social right about homosexuality, marriage and civil rights. Here’s the RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie:

This is an issue that was made an issue by the proponents of gay marriage and their advocacy of gay marriage… those in favor of gay marriage seem to indicate that tolerance is no longer defined by my accepting people for who they are… I accept people for who they are and love them. That doesn’t mean I have to agree or that I have to turn my back on the tenets of my faith and reject the tenets of my faith when it comes to homosexuality. I think when people say, well, no, that is not enough, it is not enough that you accept me for who I am, you have to agree with and condone my choice. That to me is religious bigotry and I believe that is intolerance and I think they are the ones who are crossing a line here…

But the point of equal marriage rights is not that individuals want Gillespie or anyone else to be forced to approve or condone our “evil” relationships (I use the Vatican’s adjective). It’s just that in a diverse society, there are bound to be all sorts of things of which we disapprove but which we accept because we are, well, a diverse and pluarlistic society. I don’t like arranged marriages. But I wouldn’t want to ensure that they are denied civil licenses. Gillespie, as a Catholic, presumably opposes second mariages, like that of Ronald Reagan. And yet he lives in a country where what the Vatican calls “evil” (the Reagans’ marriage) is legal and civilly valid. Because Gillespie accepts legal divorce as a citizen doesn’t mean he is being forced to approve of it as a private person or as a Catholic. Would he say that the supporters of civil divorce are religious bigots for promoting something that is anathema to the Church? I doubt it. So why the double standard for gay marriage? Hmmm. Maybe he doesn’t actually “accept people for the way they are.” Maybe if they’re gay, he thinks they have fewer civil rights and less dignity than if they’re straight.

Josh Claybourne has discovered a classic.

POSEUR ALERT: “Borridori: September 11 [Le 11 Septembre] gave us the impression of being a major event, one of the most important historical events we will witness in our lifetime, especially for those of us who never lived through a world war. Do you agree?

Derrida: Le 11 Septembre, as you say, or, since we have agreed to speak two languages, “September 11.” We will have to return later to this question of language. As well as to this act of naming: a date and nothing more. When you say “September 11” you are already citing, are you not? Something fait date, I would say in French idiom, something marks a date, a date in history. “To mark a date in history” presupposes, in any case, an ineffaceable event in the shared archive of a universal calendar, that is, a supposedly universal calendar, for these are – and I want to insist on this at the outset – only suppositions and presuppositions. For the index pointing toward this date, the bare act, the minimal deictic, the minimalist aim of this dating, also marks something else. The telegram of this metonymy – a name, a number – points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about.” – from “Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida,” by Giovanna Borridori. Excerpted in the latest Harper’s magazine.

The only cogent response I’ve heard from my post yesterday about the Clark/Kerry position on the war is that we should have pulled back in February and sent in more inspectors before launching a war without U.N. support. If that’s Clark’s position, I think he should say so. What it would have left intact, of course, was Saddam’s monstrous regime, and because he successfully hid or froze his WMD program, a clean bill of health from Mr Blix or a successor. Would we have maintained sanctions under those circumstances? That’s another question Clark and Kerry need to answer. I can’t see how we could have in the medium and long run – at least on moral grounds. So how could we be assured that Saddam would not have been emboldened by the triumph of his allies in the U.N. and re-started his WMD program or upped his financing of terrorism in the Middle East and here? These were our actual options. I still strongly think Bush picked the right one. If you are going to criticize the war, you need to say what you would have done instead. And you also need to say what you would do differently now. Leave the country to the hands of Saddamites again? Hand it over to the U.N. and watch another genocide take place? Again, it’s time the critics of Bush tell us what they’re for. If not war in March, then what? If not sanctions, what? If not nation-building now, then what?

THOSE EVIL DRUG COMPANIES: An interesting post on a great blog on the latest anti-HIV drug, T-20. If you think new drugs are expensive because of drug companies’ greed, read this. And if you think HIV research won’t be clobbered by the proposed policies of candidates like Howard Dean, read it twice.

Here’s a smart email:

In considering the retrospective debate which has emerged regarding the war in Iraq, the left and right of the Western political spectrum are obviously talking past each other. This stunted communication results from the inability of each side to simultaneously apprehend both the *substantive* and *procedural* elements of the war in Iraq and the events leading thereto. The anti-war left has proven to be comically ineffective in countering the basic point that the war has set the stage for an infinitely improved society in Iraq and has removed a dangerous and tyrannical despot. They stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the positive *substantive* result of the war.

On the other hand, the right has not been willing to recognize legitimate critiques of the *process* by which war was effectuated. The right generally will not respond to charges that the WMD threat was distorted, that the human rights justification only became a prominent one retrospectively, and that the Bush Administration’s bellicose tone in the international arena prevented the successful utilization of coalition forces in either the waging or aftermath of combat operations. Instead, they focus on the *substantive* success of the war, and pretend that the means by which these undoubtedly moral results were achieved matters not.

Here’s where I disagree. It seems to me that in retrospect, the WMD issue in Iraq was distorted, but it isn’t at all clear to me that this was deliberate. Virtually no one before the war actually agreed with Saddam that he had no WMDs (or had successfully put his program into cold storage). And the burden of proof was on Saddam to prove he didn’t have them, not on the West to prove he did. I also disagree with the notion that the human rights justification was only used retrospectively. In fact, Tony Blair made it his most forceful argument in the final weeks before the war. Re-reading my own case for war in Time last February, I see a mix of moral, strategic and WMD reasons for war. In fact it was the first reason I cited in the concluding paragraph for going to war. Those moral reasons for the war, combined with Saddam’s violation of umpteen U.N. resolutions, still stand. They will fail, however, if we do not see this through. Which is, of course, what the anti-war forces are now trying retroactively to achieve. (More feedback on the Letters Page.)

WHO RATTED ON BURNS? I asked this question a while back. In John F. Burns’ extraordinary indictment of the Western media’s fellatial relationship to Saddam, he actually claimed a fellow reporter printed up other reporters’ stories alongside his own and sent them to Saddam’s Ministry of Information to show what a good boy he was. It seems to me that this reporter should be exposed, and indeed the whole matter explored by the press. No one has followed up – surprise! – presumably because a) almost all the reporters opposed the liberation of Iraq and b) few were innocent of sucking up to Saddam. Jack Shafer has finally unloaded on this scandal that is being buried by the press corps. Jack writes: “I’m certain that the accused reporter’s readers would like to know his identity, and I’m fairly certain his editors would, too. I stop short of accusing Burns’ colleagues of silent complicity in a cover-up, but not by much.” I’m not stopping short at all. Will Saddam’s biggest suck-up please come forward?