The Dish

The Washington Capitals hockey team no less are currently flogging a new piece of merchandise. They should come up with a better idea than a sniper fitted cap.

Frank Foer has a devastating piece in the latest New Republic. I never knew that most major Western journalists work in the same building as Saddam’s Ministry of Information. Then there’s this:

“There’s a quid pro quo for being there,” says Peter Arnett, who worked the Iraq beat for CNN for a decade. “You go in and they control what you do. … So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq.” In other words, the Western media’s presence in the Ministry of Information describes more than just a physical reality.

Must-read.

Dan Savage produces another scorcher against the peacenik left. Here’s the key point:

These developments–a Republican administration recognizing that support for dictators in Third World countries is a losing proposition; a commitment to post-WWII-style nation-building in Iraq–are terrific news for people who care about human rights, freedom, and democracy. They also represent an enormous moral victory for the American left, which has long argued that our support for “friendly” dictators around the world was immoral. (Saddam used to be one of those “friendly” dictators.) After 9/11, the left argued that our support for brutal dictatorships in the Middle East helped create anti-American hatred. Apparently the Bush administration now agrees–so why isn’t the American left claiming this victory?

Because, Dan, these people hate Bush more than they care about the fate of the oppressed people they pretend to care about. Or because they have deeper suspicions about the U.S. than about Saddam’s Iraq. Yep, they’re that depraved and out of it.

Geitner Simmons compares Ellen Goodman’s sincere, if misguided liberalism, with Mike Kinsley’s anti-anti-anti-anti-war forensics. I think Geitner is onto something. What does Mike think we should do about Iraq? Funny that I still don’t have a clue. Except that if Bill Bennett is for it, Mike’s against it.

Once again, she’s a key voice for the U.S. in Europe. Check out also the Nick Lemann profile in the current New Yorker. I love her visceral disdain for identity politics, her genuine pride in her own achievements, her discipline, and tenacity. I know Cheney wants to hang on, but Bush has an amazing chance to remake his party if he asks her to be his veep nominee in 2004.

THEY LIED: Another victory for Clinton’s foreign policy. He opened up a dialogue with the murderous thugs who run North Korea, and they promised only to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. They lied, of course. And we’re stuck, once again, with the consequences of trusting them.

RAINES AWARD NOMINEE: Just take a look at this “story” from ABCNews.com, headlined: “War Worries: Support for Attacking Iraq Begins to Wane Across the U.S.” You’ll notice that the line between reporting and advocacy in this piece is non-existent. There is no data to support the headline or the thesis. There is, in fact, nothing but anecdotes sought out to prove the thesis of the article. Not a single pro-war voice is included. And the tone of the piece is quite clearly designed to counter the day when president Bush won Congressional support for the war. The piece ends: “Contrary to what the president says, when it comes to war, Americans do not speak with one voice. A national day of protest has been scheduled for Oct. 26.” I’m not sure if they broadcast this. But it’s quite simply an anti-war opinion piece.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “When asked by worried friends and acquaintances whether the President was borrowing his geopolitical theory from the diaries of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, I assured them that the President didn’t have the patience to read more than two or three pages of a Tom Clancy novel.” – Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s, in the print edition of the October issue (discovered by the More Than Zero blog.)

BAUCUS’ FLYER: A group called Montanans for Clean Campaigns have put up on their website another piece of the Montana Democratic Party’s anti-Taylor literature. This one was even sent out even after Taylor quit the race. The flyer shows a woman (or it could be a drag queen) with bright red hair (or a wig) grinning at the camera, with what looks like a fur pink boa around her neck. That image is reprinted three times on the flyer. It’s supplemented by the student loan accusations and the video-still that shows Taylor with his fingers running through a male model’s hair. It’s part of the same campaign as the now-notorious television ad. The slogan is: “At Mike Taylor’s Hair Care Schools, Someone Apart From the Customer Got Clipped.” I think this is valid supplementary evidence of what this campaign was trying to achieve. Too sissy for Montana. And the national Democrats still won’t apologize. Barney Frank’s silence is particularly deafening.

SELF-ESTEEM WATCH: More data worrying about self-esteem – from the American Psychological Association. I love the headline.

THE NYT ONLINE: Henry Copeland has amended his description of the New York Times’ online readership: the typical reader of the print edition is 45, and 56 percent of the print readers are out of the New York area.

HE LINKED! It turns out Jim Romenesko actually linked to a piece criticizing the newly leftward spin of the New York Times. I under-estimated him. Let me know the next time he does, will you?

Clive James is a very smart and funny man, but I never knew he was this clear-headed as well. In the Guardian, yes, the Guardian, he lays into the Fisks and the Pilgers and Australia’s allegedly liberal media honchos for just not getting it. His epiphany is yet another milestone on the gradual and perhaps accelerating maturation of the left:

The consensus will die hard in Australia, just as it is dying hard here in Britain. On Monday morning, the Independent carried an editorial headed: “Unless there is more justice in the world, Bali will be repeated.” Towards the end of the editorial, it was explained that the chief injustice was “the failure of the US to use its influence to secure a fair settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.” I count the editor of the Independent as a friend, so the main reason I hesitate to say that he is out to lunch on this issue is that I was out to dinner with him last night. But after hesitating, say it I must, and add a sharper criticism: that his editorial writer sounds like an unreconstructed Australian intellectual, one who can still believe, even after his prepared text was charred in the nightclub, that the militant fundamentalists are students of history.
But surely the reverse is true: they are students of the opposite of history, which is theocratic fanaticism. Especially, they are dedicated to knowing as little as possible about the history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A typical terrorist expert on the subject believes that Hitler had the right idea, that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a true story, and that the obliteration of the state of Israel is a religious requirement. In furthering that end, the sufferings of the Palestinians are instrumental, and thus better exacerbated than diminished. To the extent that they are concerned with the matter at all, the terrorists epitomise the extremist pressure that had been so sadly effective in ensuring the continued efforts of the Arab states to persuade the Palestinians against accepting any settlement, no matter how good, that recognises Israel’s right to exist. But one is free to doubt by now – forced to doubt by now – that Palestine is the main concern.

Hope springs again.

I’ve been reluctant to say this till now, but it’s my belief that what the D.C. sniper is now doing is terrorism. I don’t mean he’s a member of any specific group necessarily or even a person who might call himself a terrorist. I mean someone – a criminal – whose goal, whose purpose, is purely terror. I can see no other pattern to the shootings. The crazy Tarot card business and the fact that the sniper seems to be getting bolder point in the direction of a more typical serial killer. But other things don’t. I’m struck by how these killings are public murders. They’re designed to make the citizenry feel unsafe in its outdoor activities, its public life. I’m also struck by the lack of pattern. In fact, I think the pattern is that there is no pattern. No one is therefore safe. Isn’t that what terrorists rather than crooks try to accomplish? And then there are things like this:

One difference this time was the added touch of cruelty of shooting Ms. Franklin as her husband was a step away, unseeing and powerless to help. They were in a mundane, off-guard moment – another of the sniper’s now-clear preferences – putting purchases in their red convertible, shelving to be used in a move they were planning this month from the Washington area.

That’s an attack on our simple normality, the ease in even the most harrried life, the snatches of freedom that we all enjoy in a free society. That’s his target; that’s what he wants to kill. Again, I’m not saying we have al Qaeda or some other group here. I have no idea. I mean merely that the method is terrorism. The motive could be nihilism, or craziness or fanaticism. It could be some new hybrid of a serial killer mimicking terrorists. But its method is terror nonetheless. And it’s aimed directly at all of us.

In Britain, a big surge in pro-war sentiment: up ten points in a week. Here’s what the Guardian says:

The Guardian/ICM poll shows that 41% of voters agree with the prime minister that it is not a choice between fighting either Iraq or al-Qaida. Fewer – 35% – disagreed and said they believed the United States had “taken its eye off the ball”. The level of support for a military attack on Iraq is now at its highest level since the Guardian started a weekly tracker poll on the question in August. Opposition to a war against Iraq reached a peak in the last week of August when it touched 50% and has now fallen to its lowest level at 37%. Support for a war against Iraq is strongest amongst men – 51% approve as opposed to only 34% of women – and among 25- 34-year-olds who approve by 52% to 25%. Opposition to war is strongest among women – 41% of whom disapprove compared with 33% of men.

I’m fascinated by the generation-gap. The big difference between the anti-war movement during Vietnam and now is that this time, the young are pro-war. Or rather today’s anti-war movement is essentially your father’s: it’s the same boomer peaceniks, unable to let go. I’ve long believed that 9/11 could reshape an entire generation’s attitude toward foreign policy. Slowly, the polls are supporting that possibility.

AUSSIE SONTAGS: Yep, they exist there as well, and are guaranteed special placement in the letters pages of the major liberal broadsheet newspapers. Here’s a selection. Try not to be drinking coffee as you read this extract from The Age:

I distinctly remember both John Howard and Alexander Downer being warned that their policies in support of America in Afghanistan and Iraq were likely to endanger Australian lives and lead to direct attacks that would kill innocent Australian citizens. And they tritely brushed these warnings aside because they didn’t fit their myopic policies.
Now it has happened, and I explicitly place the responsibility at the feet of Howard and Downer. They may as well have pushed the button themselves.
Carlo Canteri, Northcote

We are paying in blood for John Howard’s arse-licking, ignorance and xenophobic bigotry.
The Governor-General should sack him and ask a less tainted figure – Costello, Downer, Beazley, Rudd – to head a government of national emergency sworn in for, say, six months. Someone of some civilised understanding of human difference. Someone less likely to lead us, yawning and prattling vacuously, into the bloodstained front line of an unwinnable world war and conscript our children to fight in it.
Bob Ellis, Palm Beach, NSW

John Howard’s enthusiastic running as a lapdog of the US, promoting George Bush’s strategic interests on the other side of the planet, has brought terrorism to our doorstep, as sensible thinkers have been warning it would.
So, not only do we have to anticipate combat troops returning in body bags – but suffer the present reality of innocent civilians being slaughtered anywhere. Where next – the Australian mainland?
Prime Minister, I blame you.
Judith Maher, Elwood

These are obviously not the only letters; and they do not seem to represent anything but a fringe of Australian opinion. But the logic of Fisk and Pilger is quite clear. Either the West surrenders now – or worse will follow.

GOVERNORS AND DEMS: John Ellis (friend and donor) thinks his cousin, Jeb, is in trouble. And if the governorships keep going to the Dems, so is W in 2004.

FISKING MCGRORY: (Try singing that to the tune of “Waltzing, Matilda.”) I didn’t think it was worth the effort. But Volokh takes just a few sentences to illuminate, well, the abyss below. (By the way, she was vacationing in Florence not Venice. My bad.)

A REPORTING NOSE-DIVE: So says yet another critical piece about the Times’ new management. Don’t expect Romenesko to link. Meanwhile an insignificant but still funny correction a few days ago: “A chart yesterday showing the European Union’s steps to expand by 10 nations in 2004 and by two more in 2007 misstated the current population of member nations. It is 378.7 million, not billion.” 400 billion, 7 degrees Fahrenheit: we get their point, don’t we?

THE IRONY OF APPEASEMENT: Responding to my latest Salon “Idiocy Of The Week”, a few have alleged that I completely mistook the meaning of Harold Meyerson’s recent piece on why we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq. They claim he didn’t mean that Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union was actually containment and appeasement (although he used both those words), he was just kidding! What Meyerson really meant, they argue, was that Reagan’s policy toward the Soviets was the same as the left’s policy toward Iraq today and that if we call that Iraq policy containment and appeasement, we have to say the same thing about Reagan. If I missed that ironic pirouette, I can’t have been the only one. But even reading his word use that way, I think my argument just got stronger. What distinguished Reagan’s policy – what differentiated it from Nixon Republicans and Carter Democrats and most of the foreign policy establishment of the time – was that he broke from containment, let alone appeasement. As I summarized his policy in Salon, it included

a rhetorical and diplomatic break in 1980 with the detente of the 1970s; a huge and costly defense buildup; financing and military support of counter-Soviet insurgencies from Nicaragua to Afghanistan; the pursuit of Star Wars; the refusal at Reykjavik to accept any deceleration in space defense spending; the description in London of the Soviet Union as destined for the “ash-heap of history”; the call on Gorbachev in Berlin to “tear down this wall”; the insistence on autonomy for the member states of the Soviet empire (yes, that one was an empire); the establishment of a united Germany in NATO; NATO membership all the way to Russia’s borders; and on and on.

I’m sorry but I fail to see how anyone can construe that as containment, let alone appeasement, which is why Meyerson didn’t support it at the time. Sure, we didn’t actually try to invade the Soviet Union the way we are with Iraq. But guess why not? They had nukes! That’s precisely what we’re trying to prevent in Iraq. And the prevention is not simply to stop Saddam using such weapons against his neighbors, but his funneling such weapons to pliant terrorists from the inviolable security of a nuclear-protected terrorist state. It seems to me that in those circumstances, even a Nixonian like Kissinger would shift position, as indeed he has. Meyerson’s piece may or may not have been in parts ironic. But, on any reading, it was still idiotic.

Amazing sentence in a new Reuters story: “The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were blamed by Washington on Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group.” Has Reuters seen the tape of Osama boasting about his crime? Or even now are they tryng to deflect blame away from the terrorists?

GOT MILK? New evidence of a wonderful new generation. Trust me. Read this. It will make your day. (Via Iain Murray’s blog.)

Is Iran coordinating al Qaeda attacks today? Much circumstantial evidence says yes.

RAINES AWARD NOMINEE: “His personal magnetism is still powerful, his presence is still commanding. Fidel Castro at 76 is a force to be reckoned with: the leader of Cuba for 43 years, he is one of the longest-reigning heads of government in the world… Although Cuba is still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro insists socialism is working. But things are changing. The U.S. dollar is no longer illegal, and some Americans are defying the U.S. travel ban to enjoy the dollar’s power here. Private restaurants are now allowed. Budding capitalists are opening shops and bars. Education is Castro’s mantra for the new Cuba. For Castro, freedom starts with education. If literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would be among the most liberated nations on Earth. Cuba’s literacy rate hovers around an impressive 96 percent, and university students pay no tuition.” – ABCnews.com. Throughout the piece, Castro is referred to as a legitimate head of government, his system a “socialist” one as if it were a democratic social democracy, and there’s not a single quote from an opponent. The piece even spins the Elian saga Castro’s way. (First noticed by Carthaginian Peace.)

NOW THE BEAGLE IS PISSED: The mullahs crack down on doggies.