The Dish

The Labour Party kicks him out.

Check out this marvelous little gem from the BBC. It’s about Qusay Hussein’s theft of $1 billion from Iraq:

It is not known if the money was the personal assets of Saddam Hussein, but the paper says the withdrawal was more than double the amount estimated to have been looted as the regime crumbled.

Saddam’s “personal assets”? Like he was an entrepreneur or something. Everything that monster owned was stolen from his people. They still don’t have a clue at the BBC, do they?

There was some excuse for the anarchy that broke out immediately upon the liberation of Iraq. We didn’t want to look like an imperial power or an occupier; and some of the pent-up frustration after decades of tyranny was probably foolish to try and restrain. But a month later, those excuses are wearing thin. I’m told that new troops are arriving daily. I know that it will take time to find a credible new government able to represent all the myriad factions in the country. But chaos is still chaos; and anarchy, as Hobbes understood, is an evil that undermines even the posibility of a civil space. This quote today from the Washington Post is worrying:

“We’re glad to hear what Mr. Bush is saying about the future, but the future is a long time. We want the present,” said Mustafa As Badar, an executive at an oil drilling company. “We want them to handle this like Americans.”

Exactly. Iraq needs order. We’ll get criticized for being too heavy-handed whatever we do. So why aren’t American troops in large numbers being deployed to keep the peace, restore order and exercise credible authority? If we do not show our commitment now to the country, what message are we sending a future Iraqi government about our commitment to a stable and long-lasting democracy?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am afraid of. Meanwhile, here in our great democracy, Americans go along with the program or remain silent, too afraid of the Muslim bogeymen thousands of miles away to recognize the Christian ones in our midst. Fearful that we will be verbally attacked, or shunned, or lose our livelihoods if we dare question the meanness that characterizes our government and, increasingly, defines our national character. I do not feel safer now than I did six, or 12, or 24 months ago. In fact, I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am af raid of. In less than two years the Bush administration has used the attacks of 9/11 to manipulate our fear of terrorism and desire for revenge into a blank check to blatantly pursue imperialist objectives internationally and to begin the rollback of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and most of the advances of the 20th century.” – Jill Nelson, MSNBC.

BUSH AND BLAIR:- Some insight from Peter Stothard, who has observed the two men working up close together. Money graf:

To watch Bill Clinton and Tony Blair together was to watch two men who would talk together, closely, intensely, for hours. Bill Clinton engaged instinctively with that liquid part of Tony Blair’s intelligence that is seeking new policy, new answers. But certainty was not part of that process. The fluid never froze. The Third Way never was. George Bush and Tony Blair speak in a different way, more like businessmen doing a deal, keeping a certain distance. Both reached the same conclusion after the attacks of September 11: that terrorism, terrorist weapons of mass destruction and terrorist states were linked. Once they had agreed that single point it was a fixed point.

Hence the bond. Hence the war. In retrospect, we were lucky to have both of them.

THERAPY AND LIBERALISM:- “There is a nasty strain of therapeutic liberalism which tries to impose its righteousness by dismissing opponents as ‘sick’ or in the hands of some compulsion. The e-mail you quote is a good example. Consider the lifestyle of Winston Churchill. He began the day in bed with a scotch and soda, then consumed a bottle of champagne for lunch followed by several double brandies. He drank beer in the afternoon, then repeated the lunch intake at dinner, before moving on to the port. He sipped Johnny Walker Red during the evening while he wrote his ‘prayers’ (‘pray explain…’). He was willing to take this policy to extremes. At a lunch with Ibn Saud, where alcohol and tobacco were barred for religious reasons, Churchill refused to comply, advising the King ‘my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.’ I’ve never seen an accounting of Churchill’s alcohol intake, but if you add up what is admitted in various biographies, he had to be drinking the equivalent of a bottle of scotch or more a day. He also chain-smoked and gambled beyond his means. Like Bill Bennett, he defended his behaviour…’I’ve taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.’ Hitler would have agreed.” – all shades of reader opinion on Bill Bennett and gambling and virtue, on the Letters Page.

FISH AND PAIN: Can they feel it? New research suggests that fishing causes genuine, if short-lived, pain to the fish. Does this change the ethics of angling? I wouldn’t think so. Is pain even something we can talk about across species? I’d say it is. More grist for Matthew Scully. And more guilt for conflicted meat-eaters like yours truly.

EURO-ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH:- The “father” of the House of Commons, i.e. its longest-standing member, reiterates his view that a Jewish cabal has too much power in Washington:

The Labour MP Tam Dalyell yesterday scornfully brushed aside accusations of anti-semitism but stood by the allegation that has landed him in political trouble, that “there is far too much Jewish influence in the United States” and one over-influential Jew in Tony Blair’s entourage… “The cabal I referred to was American,” [he added] and named seven hawkish advisers to President George Bush – six of them Jewish – as urging a strike against Syria. “It’s the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs combined with neo-Christian fundamentalists. I think a lot of it is Likudnik, Mr Sharon’s agenda, and when it comes to an attack on Syria this is a very serious matter.”

What “attack on Syria?”

CHOMSKY ON FRODO: It’s a post-modern take on the Lord of the Rings. Enjoy.

REPUBLICAN HUBRIS WATCH: A reader emails:

“I was visiting relatives in Des Moines, Iowa, this past weekend. I noticed in several different neighborhoods the following yard sign: ‘I stand with President George W. Bush and our Troops.’ This is, as far as I can tell, an official GOP yard sign. I saw it in many different yards, and I saw it plastered to the front window of the GOP headquarters downtown. The coloring and lettering are identical to the official ‘President Bush’ bumperstickers I’ve seen. If that’s not hubris and an attempt to politicize the military, I don’t know what is. The implication is clear: those who support Bush support the troops, and those who don’t support Bush don’t support the troops. If that is the GOP message for 2004, hubris is truly ascendant.”

Is this an official sign? If it is, it does strike me as pushing the limits.

UPDATE ON THE SOCIAL RIGHT:- Since I wrote early yesterday afternoon that very few theocon
s or social conservatives had criticized Bennett, many of them have. I’m sorry I hadn’t read Jonah Goldberg’s piece when I wrote that, but reading it later, its criticism of Bennett is so slight it would be easy to have missed. But now Rod Dreher, Ramesh Ponnuru, James Dobson, those perpetually Concerned Women of America, among others, have all added their two mildly censorious cents. Good for their consistency. Dobson’s lugubrious absolution is a particularly fine specimen.- The other defenses, mixed with criticism, strike me as fair enough. I don’t think my own position, pace Ramesh, is that far off theirs’ either. I defend Bennett’s right to privacy; I don’t think he’s done anything seriously wrong; he’s not a hypocrite; but he’d be in a stronger position if he hadn’t set himself up as the millionaire arbiter and promoter of virtue. But on this last theme, Ramesh makes a good point: there’s something slippery about this idea of a general moralizer. It blurs all sorts of distinctions. Is it possible, for example, to be a social conservative in one respect and not another? Could you coherently, say, smoke pot and yet also think divorce is not something that should be too easy to get? Or believe that honesty is critical in public life and yet be a big-time gambler? I’d say yes. Unfortunately, Bennett’s public persona is about the most vulnerable there is in this respect. He set himself up as Mr Virtue and made a fortune out of it. I still think it’s a bum rap; but you can see how he made himself a pretty easy target for this kind of thing.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY:- “Who the hell are these people? Is it a public broadcasting corporation? Everyone knows how ghastly and biased their coverage was.” – Tory leader, Iain Duncan-Smith, on the BBC.

EGGING GALLOWAY:- Some people demonstrate their disregard for the traitor. Still amazing to me that this story was buried in the American press.

LEO-CONS:- Nice of the New York Times to have found a photograph of me when I looked about 17 to plug into their chart of alleged Leo-cons, a cabal centered around the teachings of Leo Strauss. This idea crops up every few years or so. The average Guardian writer thinks he has stumbled across something truly sinister when he finds out that a bunch of Washington types all studied political philosophy from “Straussians.” So what? Bill Kristol and I were lucky enough to learn vast amounts from Harvey Mansfield at Harvard. Does that mean we agree about everything? Of course not. Does it mean we adhere to the same political philosophy in its entirety? C’mon. Try another angle.

REVERSING CIRCUMCISION:- An angle I hadn’t thought of. And a point that’s worth repeating:

Reiss says that if you want to experience the difference in sensation on the glans (or head) of the penis when you have the protection of the foreskin, you can conduct a test. Lightly rub a finger down the palm of your hand, and then rub it in the same fashion on the upper side of the hand. The difference in sensation is the difference circumcised and uncircumcised men feel on the head of their penis, he says.

Don’t you think that’s a difference people should actually be able to consent to?

“While opinions differ as to whether gambling is a vice, few would regard it as a virtue. This is why the news of Bill Bennett’s fondness for high-stakes gambling is so disappointing. As the nation’s leading critic of America’s virtue deficit, Mr. Bennett, like it or not, bears a greater burden regarding his personal conduct than the average citizen. The same is no less true for all of us who promote virtue in the public square. While, as Mr. Bennett says, he has done nothing illegal, the sheer scale of his gambling activities are troubling. Reports that Mr. Bennett does not dispute suggest he has wagered millions of dollars over the last decade and that casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City extend to him “high-roller” status… Again, while we have no reason to doubt Mr. Bennett’s word, gambling is not as benign as he suggests. The gambling industry attracts and fosters such other vices as prostitution, substance abuse, spousal abuse, divorce, and family abandonment. Some gloating pundits, of course, have pounced on the story to accuse Mr. Bennett of being a moralizing hypocrite. The truth is, however, Mr. Bennett has simply shown himself to have feet of clay. We are, after all, made of dust. Christians are called upon to be good stewards of God’s blessings.” – from the Family Research Council‘s email.

Jim Glassman makes a persuasive case in defense of Bill Bennett. Again, my only beef is with Bennett’s close association with moral scolds and puritans. But he isn’t guilty by association and has nothing to answer for. And again, if the standard for anyone in public life trying to support morality and virtue is that they be saints – even according to other people’s standards – then we’ll have no upholding of morality at all. That’s the point of privacy in a liberal society. Without it, moral standards in our public life become all but impossible. What I really want to see is Bennett debate Dobson on the morality of gambling. But that won’t happen, will it?

No doubt where the religious right stands on this:

“… the epidemic of gambling activity that has now penetrated every corner of American culture.”

“…the number of adults and adolescents who suffer from problem or pathological gambling is rising.”

“Clearly, gambling is a destroyer that ruins lives and wrecks families.”

“… a direct link between problem and pathological gambling and divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, bankruptcy, crime and suicide.”

“More than 15.4 million adults and adolescents meet the technical criteria of those disorders.”

“Today, the silence of most of our leaders about the risks of gambling is deafening. It is well past time for a Paul Revere to sound the alarm. Gambling is hazardous to your – to our – health!”

“There can be no doubt from the evidence that gambling – like many compulsive behaviors – is addictive and progressive in nature.”

“It is especially dangerous to the young, who are enticed by exciting and risky behaviors.”

“…the gambling industry and its allies in government work together to cultivate betting habits in the next generation.”

“We must reject the fantasy that wagering is innocuous entertainment and deal earnestly with the destruction and pain that it causes to individuals, families and society.”

For the record, I think this stuff is largely nuts. But then I’m not the one closely allied to these fanatics.

“A guy like Mailer hates a guy like Bush because Mailer thinks of himself as infinitely smarter than Bush and yet President Bush is the most powerful man on the planet and old Normy’s connecting through Atlanta and flying on prop planes to a community college that’s so far out in the sticks the mail rider has yet to arrive with the message that The Great Mailer is currently more out of the loupe than a jeweler with conjunctivitis. All so he can scoop up a submicroscopic honorarium and the accolades of star-struck locals and 18-year-olds who mistakenly think Mr. Mailer wrote “Gravity’s Rainbow.”” – Dennis Miller, fast becoming one of my icons, in today’s Journal.

No one does Schadenfreude like Kinsley does Schadenfreude. You get the feeling reading this column that it has been at least a couple decades in the formation. And all the more lethal for it. I’m amazed that no one at National Review or the Weekly Standard has even the mildest criticism to offer. But here’s a religious-right conservative weighing in at the American Spectator:

Several of the regulars on National Review’s weblog “The Corner” questioned whether Bennett’s gambling could even be called a vice as it was in the Newsweek story. The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan V. Last posted an article over the weekend referring to the controversy as “silly.” Their comments reflect the instinctive desire to protect Bennett because he has been the most articulate and successful mass-market spokesman for social conservatism during the past two decades.
But trying to whitewash the unseemly public vision of Bill Bennett sitting before a slot machine for three hours at a time to unwind after a speech before a family values group earlier in the evening is the wrong thing to do. No matter how you slice it, gambling millions of dollars is a betrayal of Bennett’s entire public career.

Still, this is the exception among social conservatives so far. They are a disciplined political bunch, don’t you think?

One of the more irritating memes of the foreign policy debate is that the world is divided between hawks, who favor military action, and doves, who favor diplomacy. Of course this has always been a crude simplification. But our current world shows something that Machiavelli understood well: that being a hawk sometimes is the only means of being an effective dove. Why have Syria and North Korea become – even temporarily – more compliant with U.S. diplomatic entreaties? Because they’re scared of us. Being feared is sometimes much more important than being loved. In the Middle East it’s almost always more important. The critical facet of the current president’s superb foreign policy has been his inclusion of Powell and Rumsfeld on the same team (with Rice operating as go-between). It has given him more credibility and flexibility than any recent president, except Reagan. And what was Reagan’s signal achievement? Bringing about the peaceful collapse of the evil empire in part by scaring the world to death. Now, we even see signs of Paris supporting U.S. pressure on Syria. From Le Parisien this weekend:

The thing is sufficiently rare to be remarked:-Paris and Washington find themselves, on the subject of Syria, following a common line.-On his return from the Middle East, Dominique de Villepin used, in effect, an unusually firm tone vis-a-vis the regime of Bachar el-Assad.-In a press conference, he first urged the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon … In his speech, Villepin [also] urged Damascus to ‘moderate’ its support of ‘politico-military’ organizations operating against Israel from Lebanese soil.-His target: Hezbollah, the Shiite group also supported by Teheran.-In plain language:-viewed from the French foreign ministry, Hezbollah, which has a main office-in Beirut, can continue its political activities, but must stop its attacks on Israel.-For Paris, a notable turn:-we remember what happened to Lionel Jospin in-February 2000 when, at the time Prime Minister, he called Hezbollah a ‘terrorist movement.’-This comment resulted in a ‘convocation’ with the President.-But why this sharp turn [in French policy]?-What’s at stake, explains one diplomat, is the seller’s bonanza that’s developing in the Middle East.-The Americans, after their ‘victory’ in Iraq, are next going to tackle-the Israel-Arab dossier. Thus France, marginalized because of its opposition to the US, wants nonetheless to have influence in the region.

Isn’t victory sweet? Just remember who got us here and who opposed it. My own take on what’s next appears opposite.

Thanks for all your emails. I’m sticking with my basic and first position which is that, absent any direct hypocrisy or illegality, Bill Bennett deserves to be left alone. I have two further thoughts, however. Bennett was a critical figure arguing that the “character” issue be used relentlessly against Bill Clinton. Now some of that was legit – Bill Clinton’s public character, his lying, untrustworthiness and abuse of his office were important things to notice and criticize. But some of the rhetoric went further than that, and Bennett clearly egged it on. I’m thinking not about genuine public issues of abuse of power, sexual harassment and perjury, but private adultery and womanizing, which were linked in Clinton’s case but not inseparable. (In so far as the American Spectator did the latter but not the former, it was also in the wrong. But you cannot have published David Brock for so long and not have also engaged in purely private moralizing and gossip. However: see R. Emmett Tyrell’s response on the Letters Page.) Here’s an email I got from a Republican political op who worked with Bennett first hand:

In 1996, Bob Dole, you may remember, resisted making a frontal attack on Bill Clinton’s character, partly because, truth be told, he actually liked him, partly because he knew instinctively it was a dangerous game to play, and partly because research showed it absolutely would backfire. (This was pre-Monica, but there was certainly enough material to work with had he chosen to do so.-He didn’t.)-Bill Bennett had the title of Vice Chairman, or maybe even Chairman of the campaign – I forget.-Even though he knew that the campaign was determined to avoid a frontal attack on Clinton’s character, he pushed it in the media and publicly trashed the campaign of which he was a part for insufficient zeal. To find out that Bill Bennett has a gambling jones this serious – and it is serious, Andrew; he’s not betting the milk money but spending night after night flushing that amount of wealth down the drain is pathological – makes one reflect on all the positions he has taken over time in which he has placed himself in a morally superior place.-On a human level, Bill Bennett is an extremely bright, engaging, fun, tough, admirable guy.-But he is also, it is now apparent, not someone who should position himself as superior to anyone, not least of which, I truly hate to say it, our former president.

Point taken.

GAMBLING AND THE GODLY: It’s also true that Bennett hasn’t simply made occasional statements about the need for virtuous living, but has made it into a campaign, defined himself by it, made a fortune off it, and has never, so far as I know, criticized the religious far right for its puritanical opposition to gambling. He has nothing to apologize for in this instance, in my opinion, but at some point, I wish he’d turn his attention to some of the extremist moralizing among his allies on the far right. Sometimes it takes being a victim of their tirades to see where they’re coming from. The most interesting part of this flap, however, will not be Bennett’s response, if indeed he thinks he needs to provide one. It will be how Kenneth Connor of the Family Research Center, Gary Bauer, James Dobson and other theocrats respond to this “miserable sinner” in their midst. Let me know if you see any statements of condemnation. It will be a simple test of how principled or political these religious groups and politicians are.