The Dish

Here’s my take on George W. Bush’s dubious conservativsm. Or you can read George Will’s column this morning.

Funny thing: Paul Wolfowitz has the same impression of slow but measurable progress in Iraq as most of the informal and private emails and reports. Sure, he’s biased. But he’s also a brilliant and sincere man who knows how important it is to make the resuscitation of Iraq a success. Here’s his assessment:

The entire south and north are impressively stable, and the center is getting better day-by-day. The public food distribution is up and running. There is no food crisis. I might point out we planned for a food crisis; fortunately, there isn’t one. Hospitals nationwide are open. Doctors and nurses are at work. Medical supply convoys are escorted to and from the warehouses. We planned for a health crisis; there isn’t one. Oil production has passed the 1 million barrels per day mark. We planned for the possibility of massive destruction of this resource of the Iraqi people; we didn’t have to do it.
The school year has been salvaged. Schools nationwide have reopened and final exams are complete. There are local town councils in most major cities and major districts of Baghdad, and they are functioning free from Ba’athist influence.

Some quagmire. He was particularly sharp onthe lack of internecine warfare. This anecdote amazed me:

We had a very moving meeting with the members of the town council and a few other independents that had been invited. When it came the turn of one old Arab to speak, in his black robes with the classic gold embroidery and a white kaffiyeh with a black band around his head, he began to talk about how “it wasn’t just the Kurds who were oppressed by Saddam; we were all oppressed by Saddam.” He thanked the president and the coalition forces for their liberation, and I thought, “Okay, and now comes ‘we Arabs deserve consideration as well.'” And the most extraordinary thing was, this old Arab said the Kurds were driven out of their homes, and they’re entitled to their homes back. I don’t know if that’s representative, but it was powerful.

He wasn’t Pollyannish, though. Our inability to get the entire electricity grid up and running is deeply problematic; so is the security problem with contract hits being assigned by Baathist remnants. But the big picture is astonishingly good under the circumstances. Wolfowitz was emphatic, as we should all be, about the amazing work of the troops out there, in difficult circumstances, under blistering sun and constant tension:

Everywhere I went, I found troops with heartwarming stories about the reception they had gotten from Iraqis and how wonderful it felt to get that kind of reception, and the sort of lingering doubt about “Don’t folks back home get it?” — and your colleagues might be able to help in that regard.
But the thing that came through over and over and over again is, “The worst thing for us is uncertainty. If you would tell us we’re going to be here for a year, we’ve got a job to do, it is a great job to do, it’s helping Iraqi people, it’s helping our country. We’d just like to have a date and work to a date.”

Sounds like he listened as well. I feel more optimistic by the day.

On the other hand, here’s a comment on the far-left Democratic Underground website that captures a certain view on the hard left:

Doesn’t a part of you wish that Queasy and Duh-day were alive?
I’ll admit they’re scum and rightfully so, but anything that lands as even more humiliation on W’s grotesque shrivelled face is that much the better.
It’s sad, really, that as despicable as they are, Saddam’s family seems to be the lesser of two evils when you compare them to the wretched little bastard occupying the White House and destroying America in the process…

Fifth column? Naaaah. Imagine being a Democratic candidate and having to find a way to appeal to these creeps. (Via Steve Den Beste).

HOW SOME LEFTISTS THINK II: Then there’s this lovely quibble from the Associated Press.

Another email from the proud parent of a marine:

My favorite story is about an amusement park that the coalition forces refurbished for the kids in the region. Like children anywhere, the kids were eager to try the rides, so the PTB decided to put one Marine in each car with the kids.-My son told me that he had his M-16 locked and loaded between his legs and then about a dozen little kids climbed in the car.-No problem, short ride? Not quite.-The ride started and the operators couldn’t shut it off.-20 minutes later, the wheel was still going around and around and around.– Moving on to the merry-go round, my son was ordered to ride guard on a horse.-They filled up the carousel with eager kids . . . and couldn’t get the ride started.-Rather than disappoint the kids, the Marines hooked up chains to the ride and ran around in circles pulling the merry-go-round. The kids were delighted and the Marines, wearing full body armor in 130 degree heat, got quite a workout.
Every package I send has, at my son’s request, candy for the kids.-He plays soccer with them and teases them like he would his own brother and sister.-In the process, he’s building some very positive relationships. The kids love the Marines.-And most of their parents do too. The mainstream press seems to focus on negativity.-There is much positive progress.

Glenn has some good news from Afghanistan as well.

“And on the al-Qaida link, it seems to me [the press] are just not doing their job at all. There are innumerable links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida that have been demonstrated very many times. And now every broadcast and every utterance by the Ba’ath Party is as if it was written by Osama bin Laden, and half the fighters in Iraq, half the bandits there, are imported from outside jihad forces. This relationship did not begin yesterday. They are, in effect, now a fusion of those who believe in the one party and those who believe in the one-God state. But the press does a very bad job of reporting that–and I go by, let’s say, The New York Times; we can’t [use] ‘the press’ too generically as David knows, but The New York Times refers to that kind of gangsterism as the ‘Iraqi resistance’… and it refers to the American presence in the country as the ‘American occupation.’ Now just tell me what you think the subliminal effect of those two terms is… , I think you and I could both agree that we know a mentality when we see one. I would say even during the war, when I was partly in the south of Iraq and mainly in Kuwait, I could tell what the press corps thought in general when–remember that slight sag in the first few days of the campaign? It looked as if the Rumsfeld plan wasn’t quite working. There was practically no one in the press, I’d say, that wasn’t pulling for that happen. They all wanted to be able to report a quagmire, a defeat, a disaster; either some of them for ideological reasons or some of them because it’s a better story.” – Christopher Hitchens, telling it like it is, on CNBC yesterday.

BORK CONVERTS: Judge Robert Bork is the latest conservative to become a Catholic under the auspices of Opus Dei, the hyper-orthodox order. Father Jim McCloskey, who has also brought other leading right-wingers into the church, emailed to let me know.

“FRUITCAKE” AND “COCKSUCKER”: Yes, Rep. Pete Stark used both terms against another Congressman. But he’s a Democrat, right? He can’t be a bigot, can he? (By the way, the only reference I can find on the Human Rights Campaign website to Pete Stark is celebrating his voting record on gay rights. But the good news on the website is that HRC is finally rallying people to support marriage rights. Yay! Ten years too late, but it’s progress.)

“Our leaders deserve a bow for this one, too, after everyone from buck privates to nine Democratic presidential candidates have called for their scalp: the battle plan is working, the enemy is on the run, and Iraq is already a better place than it’s been for 35 years. Only the “Ace of Spades” remains. The theory/ hope here is that high-profile success like this turns off most of the “bitter-enders.” Sure hope that’s the case.” – blogger Tacitus has an email from a marine in Baghdad as the news of Saddam’s sons’ deaths spread.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I watched the coverage of the deaths of Saddam’s poor sons last night, and wondered what the post-Raines NYT would say about this victory. First thing this morning I looked at the lead editorial–which I almost never bother with–to check the barometer, as it were. How would they spin this?
Under Raines, the tenor of the piece would undoubtedly have been: We can’t let this distract us from the central fact that the lying Bush administration tricked us into a quagmire by using faked evidence that got us into a war that despite the news yesterday we still aren’t winning and here are all the ways that we still aren’t winning it and did I mention the quagmire?
To my surprise, the “new” New York Times” largely played it straight. The editors did manage to be both platitudinous (Yes, there’s plenty left to do. No kidding.) and out of touch (Are you really “frustrated” that we haven’t captured Mullah Omar? Is anyone?). Yet I couldn’t help but be impressed that the editorial ended on a positive note. Killing these thugs has made America’s mission in Iraq easier. The Times, under Bill Keller, just conceded an important victory to the Bush Administration, without sneaking in a snide attack. I thought I’d never say this again, but hooray for the Times.” Amen. But typically classy of Bush as well to let the military hog the limelight yesterday. More feedback on the Letters Page.

Strange congruence between my post earlier this morning and this opinion:

We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn’t have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can’t make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That’s what I think.

Clinton is politically shrewd, whatever else you think of him. Far, far shrewder than the current political pygmies in his party.

CNN AND IRAN: A truly disturbing story, if true. Will CNN confirm? Are they still sucking up to the mullahs?

The basic and under-reported news – of slow but measurable progress in Iraq – got a fillip yesterday with the killing of Saddam’s two vile sons. Of course, no one but a few crackpots can be anything but thrilled by this news. But the best part of this event is that it focuses us back on what really matters: not quibbles over intelligence lapses months ago, but the war against terror and tyranny now. What happened yesterday will help remove the fear among some Iraqis that the Baathists might return; and so help the reconstruction immeasurably. It’s wonderful news. But of course this focus – on our current progress and on how we now move from one success to another – is exactly the kind of topic the anti-war left (and right) want to avoid. It is vital to them that we forget just how evil the Saddam regime was, that we ignore the immeasurably better life Iraqis (and Afghans) now have, that we do not build on this success to take the cause to Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia. Why? Because all that will merely strengthen Bush and weakening Bush – regardless of its effects on the wider world – is the prime obsession of the antis. And his success will only legitimize the future use of American power and that again is something these types want above all to prevent. Boy, did they love those 16 banal words. How much easier to obsess on that than on the true dangers that confront us in the Middle East, the growing confluence of state terrorism and WMDs, the rise of fanatical Islamo-fascism, and on and on. Sure, some criticisms of our current strategy in Iraq are well-intended and helpful. We need more criticism of that type. But the relentless negativism and cynicism from much of the media springs from something deeper – and more fundamental.

THE PRE-9/11 MIND: The more I read emails or talk to anti-war types, I get a sense that 9/11 never really happened. Or if it happened, it meant nothing more than a discrete crime with discrete criminals who alone deserved justice. The notion that it meant that we were and are actually at war with a series of terrorist entities and the tyrannies that support them never truly took hold on the far left (or right). As the months have passed, their complacency and denial have undoubtedly metastasized among others as 9/11 recedes from our collective consciousness and its emotional wound begins to heal. These people, it’s worth remembering, believe that the exercise of American military power is almost always more morally problematic than any foreign tyranny or even a serious security threat to the homeland. They can only justify American military power if it is wielded under imminent, grave danger that can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s why they are so exercised about tiny pieces of evidence today. They still believe we were wrong to remove Saddam from power without incontrovertible proof of WMDs of a type unobtainable in police states; they still believe America had no moral sanction for such an action; and they are even more determined to prove the superiority of their case now that the war was such a military success. So they have to turn the fallible evidence before the war into “lies”; and they have to turn the difficult but worthy post-war reconstruction into a “quagmire.” They know the only chance they have is to turn American public opinion against the war so as to prevent any such exercise of military power again. In that sense, they really cannot simply be mocked. They must be challenged at every turn. For they are engaged in a process that will not only stymie efforts at reforming the Middle East but will make Americans and others more vulnerable to the designs of the Islamofascists and their terrorist allies. The war abroad cannot therefore be extricated from the debate at home. We will not win the former without winning the latter.

With that in mind, here’s an appeal to anyone out there with firsthand experiences in Iraq today – in the military or elsehwere – to send me your own impressions of what’s going on. I don’t trust most of the journalists, I’m afraid. Here’s part of one email I just received:

I left early this morning for Mosul then to a town in Northern Iraq called Duhok. It is a Kurdish city and a bigtime market place. The people there really love the Americans… more than anywhere else. It was a very cool experience. Kids wanting to touch you and thank you for getting rid of Saddam. I had one kid saying… “mister… Saddam very bad … bush very good…” and repeating it over and over. It was a very long day and I am glad to be back at Qwest… Northern Iraq is soo pretty with the mountains and some water. The Kurdish people are very friendly and honest. One of the soldiers dropped money accidentally out of his pocket and didn’t notice. A whole group of kids came up and pointed to it saying ” Mister your money…” Most kids in shitty places like this would just steal the cash and run.

News you won’t get on the BBC. Then there’s this fascinating blog from a soldier in Iraq calling himself “Chief Wiggles.” My favorite passages:

0900 The workday begins with a quick meeting with the major. We review what has gone on over the last 24 hours and what we should focus on over the next 24 hours. We are getting prisoners every day, up to hundreds at a time, along with the ones we already have. We have a screening team, an interrogation team, counter intelligence team, our analysts, an OCE section and the rest of the operation people. Each team has a mission and responsibility for a different area of the total overall operation. We are all busily engaged in extracting and compiling information regarding the most important issues at hand, like weapons of mass destruction, etc. I can’t say in detail but we have been instrumental through our intel in capturing people, preventing hostilities, and a variety of other things. We are making a difference in the overall effort here.
0945 I go through my government email from various people stationed around the country who are forwarding information or who have requests for information.

Just an average day, making things a tiny bit better for the people of Iraq. And it’s not easy:

These are tough times for all, not just for the prisoners. All of us here are away from our families, away from our lives and have our own degree of sacrifice and suffering. There are young men here who got married right before they were mobilized, others who had a wife they left with small children, many that left a pregnant wife missing the birth of their first child, others with illnesses and deaths at home, many with financial situations, many interrupting their education or other planned events, and just missing out on our lives back home. But we chose to serve. We chose to be a good neighbor to our brothers and sisters here in Iraq. We chose to do our part to bring about the liberation of these people, to put them back on their path towards freedom and democracy.

I find such sentiments and such lives deeply moving. This is the core of what is going on: a brutal dictator was deposed and a country rescued and brought fitfully back to life. The men and women who accomplished this are, to my mind, heroes. For them we should apologize? For them we should even explain?

Here’sa fascinating piece of data comparing Ronald Reagan’s spending record in his first three years woth George W. Bush’s. Some highlights: education spending was cut by 33 percent by Reagan; it has grown 27 percent under Bush; “community and regional development” saw its budget cut by 33 percent by Reagan; Bush increased it by 32 percent; transportation was down 11 percent under Reagan; it’s up 16 percent under Bush. The man just can’t stop spending our money. With Clinton gone, the era of small government is over.

BAATHIST BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Here’s how they headlined yesterday’s news about the killing of Saddam’s sons: “US celebrates ‘good’ Iraq news.” Yes, that “good” again. The Beebers must be truly sad to see two mass murderers brought to justice. One BBC journalist even pronounced that the deaths might cause an intensification of anti-American violence. Wishful thinking. Oliver Kamm nails it:

The BBC’s output of news and current affairs is in chaos; it lacks adequate controls; it is consistently ill-informed; certain of its correspondents are frankly ignorant of the subjects they’re supposed to specialise in; it is sentimental rather than analytical; it introduces – not even covertly, for its practitioners know of no other way of making sense of the world – a bias that treats pressure groups as invariably disinterested and political authority as deceitful; and it reports on the security policies of western democracies, specifically the United States and Israel, as if no terrorist threat existed and these countries’ military actions were evidence of malign intent rather than defensive necessity.

Abolish it, I say.

THE NEW NEW YORK TIMES: The Onion has an infograph.