The Dish

It’s not just Hitch who’s breaking with some elements of the left. Here’s an email I just got from a former key ACT-UPer:

I have always described myself as a liberal or progressive. I am a gay man living in Manhattan, I am pro-choice, a registered Democrat and have been active in gay organizations from ACT UP to HRCF. However since 9/11 I find myself growing more and more estranged from the left. They just seem clueless and adrift, bitter and angry. The immediate reaction of some on the left to 9/11 was appalling. The creeping anti-Semitism of the left is especially shocking and hypocritical. This one question of the Middle East has led me to examine all my left leaning beliefs. And I am not alone particularly here in New York. People who would normally be described as left are taking tentative steps in the same direction-rightward. We feel guilty about it and are afraid to discuss our new found politics with our friends. Indeed one friend who describes himself as a dedicated Marxist(read hypocrite) has written me off. My old ACT UP friends, with whom I have been arrested, are shocked at my center right views. My response is that ACT UP was actually founded on very conservative libertarian principles. At times it was even reactionary and dispalyed some facist tendencies. Nowadays you can find me reading downloaded and printed articles from National Review, Weekly Standard and,. happily, Slate at my favorite cafes in Manhattan. I still am a little embarrassed if anyone were to look over my shoulder and see me reading these publications but I am ready for any pithy comment that may come my way.

“[B]itterness is not a policy position. In past moments of foreign policy decision – first the Gulf war, then Bosnia – Al Gore has championed the moral and strategic necessity of American power and thus offered a model for his party. We wish we could say that at this moment of decision he was doing the same.” – The New Republic, in its current editorial. This is another great lede, measured, detailed, and all the more damning for that. Anyone who works for a political magazine will have stresses and strains, as Christopher Hitchens has with the Nation. But every now and again, you’re reminded (or not) of why you care about a particular institution. TNR’s intellectually honest criticism of Gore is a tribute to their integrity. I’m proud to be on their masthead.

This concept is a slippery one, so perhaps it’s worth examining its various possible meanings. The most obvious way to gain political advantage from a successful war is timing it to coincide with elections. I don’t see how the Bush administration can be plausibly said to have done this. The most obvious reason for the timing of this war has been the need to replenish materiel after Afghanistan and to go through the diplomatic motions to legitimize the enforcement of U.N. resolutions against Saddam. Even so, there will be no war until after the elections, and until the military conditions for victory are about as perfect as they can be. The second meaning, I suppose, is that the administration has shifted the public debate to Iraq in the run-up to elections. But here too, I think, it’s a bum rap. Andy Card’s crass remark that the war was a “new product” timed for a new season is the single best evidence of this. But it’s also clear, isn’t it, that some kind of pre-election debate on continuing the war on terror was inevitable, and the Democrats and anti-war liberals were among the first demanding that such a debate take place. I think they’re right. But they can’t have it both ways. Here’s a paragraph from today’s Washington Post:

More than a dozen Democrats, who requested anonymity, have told The Washington Post that many members who oppose the president’s strategy to confront Iraq are going to nonetheless support it because they fear a backlash from voters. A top party strategist said every House Democrat who faces a tough reelection this fall plans to vote for the Bush resolution. Senate Democrats are so concerned that Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (Minn.) could lose his seat because he will likely vote against the Bush resolution that they are drafting an alternative resolution “because he has to have something to give him cover,” a Democratic Senate aide said.

And these are the people accusing president Bush of putting politics before national security!

DASCHLE’S COMPLAINT: But what about Tom Daschle’s specific complaint? What Daschle had a herd of cows about is the following statement by Bush:

The House responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president and future presidents to better keep the American people secure.

What the president is talking about is whether the new homeland defense bureaucracy will be unionized. He’s clearly trying to pressure the Democrats to change their position, which would limit the ability of the new security organization to fire incompetent workers if need be. The Dems are prepared to hold up the legislation until the unions are satisfied. I think it’s unfair to infer from that that the Dems are “not interested” in security, which is where Daschle has a point, and the president went over the line. But I don’t think this extends to the notion that the president is politicizing the war as such. If the Dems take positions that the president believes are impeding national security in wartime, he has a duty to say so. That’s not politicization. It’s politics. In fact, it’s slightly creepy to believe that debating questions of war policy – how to attack Iraq, how to handle post-Taliban Afghanistan, how to set up domestic security, and so on – should somehow be sealed off in a lock-box of non-partisanship.

THE REAL ISSUE: No, the deeper issue that Daschle is responding to, methinks, is Gore’s speech. What Gore has done is galvanize the peacenik wing of the Democrats, undermining Daschle’s leadership, and pushing Daschle into a corner. If Daschle now goes along with the president, he’ll be called a poodle by the left. If he balks, he risks the Democrats becoming associated once again in the public mind with vacillation in matters of national defense. He’s trapped, and when pushed by Bush and Gore at the same time, he exploded. I think he also realizes that his entire strategy to keep the Senate and win back the House is in trouble. He decided early on me-too-ism, so as to return the debate to less troublesome matters like free pills for seniors. But this didn’t work, as the war debate kept going and going despite his best efforts. What the Republicans are dreaming of is a November election between peacenik Dems and warrior Republicans. In the run-up, Bush talks about national security, while the Democrats whine about politicizing the war. Bush talks about international substance; the Dems talk about domestic process. On those grounds, the GOP wins in November. Daschle, it seems to me, has just increased the odds of that happening.

THE GREENSPAN-BLAIR ALLIANCE: In London, Alan Greenspan implied he was against Britain joining the euro. And there was another revealing tidbit about his relationship with Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor:

It was unknown how close Mr Brown and his staff are to Mr Greenspan. Yesterday, Mr Brown described him as “a good friend” and “a great American, America’s greatest central banker, not just of our generation but of all time, and one of the world’s most esteemed statesmen”. He said Mr Greenspan had secretly helped him plan to make the Bank of England independent. Before the 1997 election, Mr Brown and his economic adviser, Ed Balls, visited Mr Greenspan several times.

Did Clinton know, I wonder?

NICOTINE VERSUS ALZHEIMERS: Hey guys, get smoking! You’ll die quicker – and with better brain functioning.

PURITANISM COMES HOME: The war against smokers comes to Boston.

NOW, CANADA: What timing the Dems have. As soon as they start looking as if they’re anti-war, even the Canadians come on board.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I should take up smoking … because every time I finish having sex, I have to read your weblog.” Glad to oblige, bro.

THE OLD CHESTNUT: “Finally, there’s that old chestnut “our values must be spread solely by suasion.” Not. The greatest instrument for the spread of democracy in the 20th century was the American Army, and in the Middle East today the spread of democracy is intimately linked to the success of the war. It is almost as if belief in Western values depends on the success of Western arms. Does that sound familiar? It’s a variation of the “God is on our side” doctrine. The outcome of struggle shows which side God is on. Maybe we modern acculturated intellectuals don’t believe it, but the peoples of the Middle East – if you must, call it “the street” – mostly do believe it. And so if you want to spread our values, you’ve gotta win the war.” – Michael Ledeen, responding to your criticisms on the Book Club page today. More emails will be posted this afternoon.

According to Josh Marshall. Now there really is no reason to read it any more.

For those who despair of the Democrats on national security, there’s always John Edwards. Here’s his recent statement on Iraq:

[T]he terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam’s arsenal, and there is every possibility that he could turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11th had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat, and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror.

He’s both right and politically savvy – the unGore. Which, presumably, is a deliberate choice. (The same goes for Joe Lieberman, who’s just been given a whopping big excuse to dump his deference to Gore in the primary stakes.

MORE SMOKING FOR HEALTH STORIES: I’m no doctor and can’t vouch for these anecdotes, but they strike me as worth investigating, if only because they show that smoking cigarettes – though obviously harmful in almost all cases – is not invariably so. Here’s one:

For people with a genetic predisposition to Parkinson’s disease, smoking has also been found to have protective capabilities by inhibiting the production of the MAO-B enzyme and thus preventing it from prematurely breaking down the neurotransmitter dopamine which, at chronically low levels, leads to Parkinson’s disease. Since dopamine slows down the transmission of nerve impulses and coordinates muscle movement, a shortage of dopamine can cause an unregulated and heavy traffic of electrical signals in the brain and can over-excite the muscles and cuase them to spasm and lock.

And here’s another:

My Dad developed ulcerative colitis (related to Crohn’s), Wound up in the hospital for 2 weeks. A couple of days before they were going to removed his colon, we found some obscure study on the net indicating that nicotine was related to the problem. We insisted that the Doctor prescribe the patch. Dad was out of the hospital in 2 days………with his colon intact. Some have come to call Ulcerative Colitis the “non-smokers” disease, because smokers never get it. My father had quit smoking 5 years prior to his illness.

Desperate times call for desperate measures but Democratic party loyalist, Tim Noah, comes through! Watching Tim find some kind of internal consistency in Gore’s positions is like watching someone try to thread a needle on the Acela Express. But he gets points for trying. (Here’s an issue worth dissecting apart from Gore’s sophistry: what are the reasons for Gore’s belief that it’s impossible to fight both al Qaeda and Saddam? The military doesn’t seem to agree. So what are the actual arguments rather than the bogus ones anti-war Democrats want to flaunt to avoid the obvious inference that they don’t like the war on terror and want to stop it as soon as possible?)

I didn’t know this about smoking, and it seems worth airing. From a reader:

Here’s something that many doctors (and patients) know about, but I have yet to see it in the media…tobacco reduces intestinal inflammation associated with Crohns Disease. My stepmother has been a Crohns patient for, oh, 50 years. In recent years, she has tried without success to quit her longtime smoking habit, but every time – even with the patch and the gun – her Crohns flares up (abdominal cramps and other nasty things). Finally, she learned that nicotine, especially when delivered via a cigarette, is an effective anti-inflammatory. This has nothing to do with the fact that she’s smoked for 50 years; Crohns patients who have never smoked in their lives enjoy a benefit from smoking. Okay, so what else is new? Feds notwithstanding, many sick people claim relief from toquing up; why not lowly nicotine? My stepmother – who remains in generally good health despite the Crohns – still tries to wean herself from this habit. God knows society would rather see her sick than smoking.

I say legalize medical tobacco now! (It is legal, dummy – ed.) I know, but if Hillary has her way …

Henry Hanks supplies these two classic Gore quotes:

I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop.

That was 1991. Then there’s this week:

Now, back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War, and I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, groups that we had, after all, encouraged to rise up against Saddam.

Mike Kelly has his number.

Ten minutes on the phone to Apple (an amazing guy in tech support called Jonathan) and I’m back. Don’t ask me what happened. But it’s better now. The support staff was excellent, and my Mac-love continues.

It won’t satisfy the appeasers, but it sure scares the hell out of me. Blair puts it best: “Read it all and again I defy anyone to say that this cruel and sadistic dictator should be allowed to get his hands on nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” Why don’t the Democrats have a leader of similar guts and stature?

ALL IMPERIALISTS NOW?: The Book Club discussion of Michael Ledeen’s “War Against The Terror Masters,” continues today. Michael will respond to your comments tomorrow.