The Dish

From the Times of London today:

The popular crusade against confrontation with Iraq, which has galvanised support for the Social Democrats, has taken on an anti-American dimension, earning Herr Schröder some unwanted support. The latest issue of the Iraqi weekly al-Iqtisadi, said to express the views of President Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, called the Chancellor’s attitude “more honourable than that of the Arab countries”. In addition, German neo-Nazis, including the former head of the far-Right Republican Party, Franz Schönhuber, are coming out in support of the Chancellor for having adopted “the German way” in defying the United States.

Recall that the head of Germany’s intelligence told the New Yorker earlier this year that he believed Saddam was on the brink of nuclear capacity. Look forward to arguments saying that allowing the nuclear devastation of Israel is not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist.

WAS TIME WRONG? Sandy Berger says the Clinton administration did not hand over an al Qaeda document to the new Bush administration, as claimed in Time’s recent cover-story. Was Mike Elliott wrong? Will Time address this discrepancy?

DUBYA AND THE YOUNG: I’m struck by the generational dynamics in the latest Ipsos-Reid poll. The GOP has a huge lead among the young, especially men under 44. I wonder why. Could it be that September 11 was a more potent event for those with less life experience under their belts? Or is it that the young recognize that the Democrats are essentially a political operation designed to take money from the young and productive and give it to the old and rich and retired? Both possibilities are encouraging.

SUMMERS TAKES ON ANTI-SEMITISM: Good for him. How long before Harper’s Lee Siegel accuses him of being a closet anti-Semite?

I’m mystified why more hasn’t been made of Saddam’s assertion in his letter to the United Nations of the global threat of world Jewry. Here’s the key passage:

In targeting Iraq, the United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism, which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children and seeking to impose their domination on the whole world, not only militarily, but also economically and politically.

Like the rest of the letter, this part is barely literate but its meaning is clear. Saddam is claiming that the U.S. is a tool of Zionist forces that are trying to take over the whole world! This isn’t like Hitler. It is Hitler. When a figure like this simply echoes Nazi language, why isn’t there universal shock and derision? Why isn’t that the headline? Or have we become completely inured to the fact that the 1930s are alive and well and centered in Baghdad and the West Bank?

41, 43 AND UNILATERALISM: Much is currently made of the contrast between the first Bush’s instinctive multilateralism and his son’s alleged go-it-alone recklessness. So I’m glad Jon Rauch tracked down this passage in George H.W. Bush’s memoir, “A World Transformed,” co-written with Brent Scowcroft. The passage begins with news reaching the president of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait:

A few minutes later, I was on the phone with Tom Pickering, our U.N. ambassador. While I was prepared to deal with this crisis unilaterally if necessary, I wanted the United Nations involved as part of our first response, starting with a strong condemnation of Iraq’s attack on a fellow member. Decisive U.N. action would be important in rallying international opposition to the invasion and reversing it.

My italics. Methinks the contrast between 41 and 43 is overblown.

Dana Milbank comes to appreciate Bush’s under-rated political skills.

UNI-MULTI-LATERALISM: The Financial Times’ Gerard Baker elaborates on the point I was trying to make yesterday. And does it better.

WHAT WONDERFUL ROADS!: A reader sent me this priceless Robert Fisk piece in 1993 – on Osama bin Laden. Puff piece doesn’t begin to describe it. There are breathless paeans to Osama’s construction business! Read every word, and get a clue where this “reporter” is coming from.

THE LEFT AND POWELL: I’ve never been of the view that Powell is some lone ranger in this administration, fighting its policies from day to day. That line, of course, is part of his (and Bush’s) spin, but Powell has always been a team player and the administration’s war strategy is a lot stronger for being a Cheney-Powell combo than either man (or merely the president) alone. I wondered when the left might catch on to this. Maybe they have. Here’s a rant in the San Fancisco Bay Guardian:

Now, journalists tell us that the latest manifestation of Powell’s “moderate” resolve is his stance on Iraq. But the Powell rhetoric about the need for allied support and U.N. Security Council backing can be understood as a fervent desire to line up as many ducks as possible before the shooting starts. Under Powell’s direction, U.S. diplomats – diligently laying down groundwork for war – are brandishing carrots and sticks at numerous countries.

Wow. Intelligence among the San Francisco left. I’m getting worried.

AIDS ACTIVISTS VERSUS RESEARCH: They’re finally having an impact on HIV research. By demonizing drug companies, gutting intellectual property rights, and forcing down drug prices, AIDS activists have now succeeded in dramatically slowing HIV research. Way to go, guys! Here’s a troubling but predictable piece in the Jerusalem Post about this phenomenon. One passage:

One of the rare industry executives who would actually discuss the topic, but did not wish to be identified, agreed that although he didn’t like to admit it, “we have lost the battle with the activists, and now the market is less profitable. The result is that we are spending less R&D time on anti-retrovirals. Why bother to innovate these products when any advance will not be profitable?” he said.

What’s interesting here is that there is a collusion of interests between the leftist campaigners and the publicity-shy drug companies. The lefties want to insist there’s no trade-off in the hounding of pharmaceutical companies; the companies don’t want to admit that their research is fueled by such gross motives as making money. Meanwhile, progress against a fast-mutating virus slows.

THE TIMES CORRECTS: The New York Times is just alerting its syndicated clients of the following correction:

“Newspapers that used the William Safire Op-Ed column sent Sept. 11 for publication Sept. 12 may wish to use the following corrective. A column by William Safire, discussing the royal family of Saudi Arabia, gave an incorrect age for Abdullah al-Aziz bin Fahd, a son of King Fahd. He is 32 years old, not 60.”

To be fair to Safire, he did write “about 60.”

“KILL THE JEWS”: What are the odds that if two Muslim Americans were attacked outside a bar in Los Angeles by a bunch of white ethnics, that we would have heard of it by now? But the equivalent allegedly happened to two Jewish guys in West Hollywood, who were set upon by a gang of Middle Eastern youths last Sunday night:

John Griffith, a resident of Sierra Towers, says he saw more than 20 men surrounding the two victims and witnessed five kicking and beating the victims, repeatedly chanting “Kill the Jews!” When the victims fled to seek safety with Sierra Towers’ security guards, Griffith says, two suspects followed the men and threatened the guards with a metal pipe taken from a nearby sprinkler system and with fists, before the guards fought them off. “It was the worst thing I have ever observed,” Griffith says. “I kept screaming at them, but they were yelling so loudly they couldn’t hear me. I kept yelling, ‘I’ve called the cops.’ “They didn’t budge, they just kept attacking these guys,” he adds.

No coverage yet in the Los Angeles Times. UPDATE: Matt Welch emails to let me know that the LA Times did cover the attacks, but the text shows no reference to their anti-Semitic nature.

TOP TORY BACKS GAY MARRIAGE: In Canada at least. The Canadian government is trying to stop equal marriage rights on the basis that gays cannot procreate. Does that mean that infertile straights won’t be able to get married? Or couples who intend never to have children? Or straight couples who do not procreate but adopt? Of all the arguments for special rights for straights, this seems to me the dumbest.

GERMANS VERSUS JEWS: In another ugly piece of campaign rhetoric, the deputy leader of the Free Democrats has tried to gin up his support by attacking the state of Israel. Until recently there was a taboo on such comments in Germany, but no longer. The leader has been criticized by elites but it’s more revealing, to my mind, that he believes he can pick up votes this way. Not only has Germany helped build Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, it is now doing all it can to ensure he keeps them, and the threat they pose to Israel. Chilling, no?

The latest CNN/USA Today poll makes for fascinating reading. The usual gender gap in war-support has evaporated, with women just as likely to back a war against Iraq as men. More interesting, on the question of who’s exploiting this for domestic reasons, the Democrats come off worse than Bush. 59 percent say the Dems are delaying a war-vote for political reasons. Only 26 percent believe Bush’s war-timing is politically motivated. As so often, the voters have sized it up pretty accurately.

SADDAM, SADDAM, SADDAM: This via Instapundit: Mike Silverman’s guide to Saddam art in Iraq. I prefer the little gay guy in the South Park movie myself. Man, could he dance.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Actress Susannah Harker, of House of Cards and Pride and Prejudice, said supporting the anti-war campaign was a ‘moral stance’ for her. She said: ‘If this is about producing weapons of destruction I think that America is the worst culprit and they should be dealt with first.'” – BBC Entertainment news.

I’ve long been skeptical of the notion that governments in foreign affairs are either multilateralist (good) or unilateralist (bad). It seems to me that any government’s first priority in foreign policy should be the pursuit of national interest, broadly understood. For some, that’s a unilateralist position, almost by definition. But I’d argue that it’s more nuanced than that. The pursuit of national interest can (and should) lead to multilateral arrangements – NAFTA, GATT, NATO, the EU, etc – that benefit each party. Moreover, these multilateral arrangements work precisely because they do represent the sum of national interests, and aren’t merely talking shops based on high-minded but impractical ideals. These diplomatic contraptions, in other words, are means, not ends. Bush gets this, I think. And it’s a profound improvement on the muddled abdication of American leadership in the previous administration. But Bush adds a twist. It may be that some multilateral deals only really work when one of the critical parties to them threatens to abandon them and go it alone. Call it “unilateral multilateralism”. Thatcher’s relationship with the E.U., was rather like this. And Bush’s continued insistence that the U.S. reserves the right in the last resort to deal with Iraq by itself has, I think, been the single most important factor in forcing the U.N. to act. His unilateralism made multilateralism possible. And it also gave direction to the multilateralism, reminding the U.N. that it should be concerned with tangible results not just debates and resolutions. I doubt the U.N. is up to the task, but it is one of the ironies of the present moment that without Bush’s threat to walk, the U.N. wouldn’t even recognize the task in front of it. You know, he really is a lot smarter than his critics recognize. Which is, of course, fine by him.

SAFIRE AND THE GERMANS: Amazing anecdote by Bill Safire today about the former German Defense minister. Did he really explain U.S. foreign policy as being designed to placate Jews? It’s bad enough that German companies have helped arm Saddam in his attempt to finish what Hitler started, but that the German government should now be trafficking in this poison is truly disturbing. There will be payback. I don’t think some Europeans understand that part of post 9/11 America is a greater sense of who really helps the U.S., and who deserves American help in return. There is no longer much ambivalence about fair-weather friends, especially in the mind of someone as ferociously loyal as W. My feeling is that Tony Blair is actually a shrewder power-broker in this respect than Schroder. Blair knows that the rewards for him and his country as the hegemon’s closest ally far outweigh short-term domestic drawbacks. Schroder isn’t as smart. Man, I hope he loses.

MANDELA’S PIQUE: In an interview with the Guardian, Nelson Mandela gets someone else to play the race card: “When there were white secretary generals, you didn’t find this question of the US and Britain going out of the UN. But now that you’ve had black secretary generals, such as Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, they do not respect the UN. This is not my view, but that is what is being said by many people.” I think this is probably lamer than playing the race card yourself. How “black” is BBG anyway? About as “black” as Iraq. And wasn’t Annan the Anglo-American pick? All this, sadly, is vicarious grand-standing. And completely blind to the reality in Iraq.

IDIOCY OF THE WEEK: “The president made the case against Saddam Hussein as an outlaw and a malign dictator who represents ‘a grave and gathering danger.’ But the particulars of his tyranny rather strikingly resemble those of Saudi Arabia, which is our ally in the war against terrorism.”
Let’s unpack this particular piece of characteristic inanity from Mary McGrory in the Washington Post last Saturday.
How is Saddam’s tyranny in Iraq strikingly similar in its particulars to Saudi Arabia?
Iraq is not a theocracy, as Saudi Arabia is. It’s an ostensibly secular military police state, run by a single despot. Saudi Arabia, in contrast, is an oil-rich, religiously conservative theocratic oligarchy. However noxious both regimes are, it’s indisputable that they are very different in their particulars.
Iraq has been developing weapons of mass destruction. Saudi Arabia hasn’t, isn’t and won’t.
Saddam has fought two disastrous wars against its neighbors – Iran and Kuwait. He invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia if the West hadn’t stopped him. Saudi Arabia has never invaded another country.
Iraq is in violation of umpteen U.N. resolutions. Saudi Arabia isn’t.
Iraq has gassed its own citizens and used chemical weapons in wartime. Saudi Arabia hasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. Saudi Arabia’s financing of Wahhabist Islam is deeply threatening to the region, Western interests and Western values. At some point, we’ll need regime change there as well, if we are to stop Islamo-fascism’s growth and appeal. But the very religiosity of Saudi Arabia distinguishes it from Iraq in the particulars of its tyranny. And its threat is financial and ideological, not military. We even have a military base there!
Now these are simple, obvious, readily available facts, obvious to anyone with even the slightest passing knowledge of the region and its history. Yet a leading liberal columnist is able to make such a statement and have it printed in the Washington Post. And the knee-jerk left wonders why it isn’t relevant any more. (First published in Salon.)

HOW MEAN WAS THAT? Here’s an email from someone in response to the above nugget about Mary McGrory’s recent column. It’s worth responding to:

I don’t think you should have been mean to Mary Mcgrory. You could have just written a column that obviously disagreed but you really said some awfully mean things and I do wish you would not do that.

I get a few emails on those lines. But looking back on the piece, I can only see two vaguely “mean things”, which is my comment that her column this week was characteristically inane and that her knowledge of the region, if judged by this sloppy remark, is shallow. A tough judgment? Sure. A personal attack? Nope. I make a very simple distinction in how I write. I try extremely hard not to make any references to anything outside an individual’s actual work. Even though I’m sure I’ve made a few comments in my time I now wish I hadn’t, I really try hard not to mention anyone’s private life, looks, integrity, morality, or other purely ad hominem comments. But I see no reason why you can’t be as devastating as you can with someone’s arguments or style or logic or politics or public conduct. That’s not being mean; it’s being tough. Maybe it’s my being brought up in the English debating style, where really brutal repartee isn’t taken very personally outside the debating chamber. Maybe others see the line between being tough and being mean somewhere else. But that’s how I see it myself. And it’s probably worth putting on the table, if only so you can call me on it when I slip.

MODO UNHINGED: Several of you have asked me to comment on Maureen Dowd’s latest piece of desperate, random, incoherent, and loopy free association with regard to president Bush. Alas, I can’t Fisk it because there’s no argument. But then, with Dowd, there rarely is. It’s class hatred mixed with fan
tasy, made palatable by occasionally diverting turns of phrase. And wildly popular with some.

American Jews are still mystifyingly Democratic. I put it down to fear of the religious right. But since September 11, Jewish voters have seen the biggest proportional jump in support for the president. Maybe many are realizing that in this epic global struggle, Bush is a far more reliable friend than many in the Democratic Party. Here’s Gallup’s summary:

Bush approval went up slightly more among the Jewish population than among either Protestants or Catholics. The increase was 19 percentage points among Protestants, 24 points among Catholics, and 30 points among Jews. Thus, while the difference between Jews and Protestants in Bush approval was 26 percentage points in the surveys conducted before Sept. 11, 2001, it narrowed to only 15 percentage points in the surveys conducted after the terrorist attacks. The same general pattern of narrowing differences in this approval number occurred between Catholics and Jews.

“If you close your eyes when they are talking about Iraq and replace it with Israel then everything they say applies. The weapons of mass destruction are there in the Middle East, they are in the hands of the Israeli government, the most dangerous hands they could possibly be in.” – British socialist, Paul Foot, calling for “regime change” in Britain.

THE LEFT VERSUS INSPECTIONS: Fascinating, to me at least, that both the Guardian and the New York Times have pieces today saying U.N. weapons inspections cannot work. Does that mean both papers will back president Bush’s insistence on U.N. backed actual disarmament? Don’t bet on it.

I just read the new Atlantic’s essay on the rise of fundamentalist, Pentecostalist and arch-conservative Christianity across the developing world. It’s not online, but there’s an interview with its author, Philip Jenkins here. His book might make interesting reading. What to make of it? It’s not exactly news, but its implications are clear. People like me who are devoted to post-Vatican II Catholicism will probably in our lifetimes see the Western (or Northern) Church either go into real schism or collapse altogether into an orthodox and severe rump, from which we will be effectively excluded. The future of Christianity – where its energy is, where the passion is, where the new flocks are – is clearly in Africa and Asia and South America, where pentecostalist movements or highly traditional forms of Catholicism are making huge gains. The next pope, it seems likely to me, will make this one look like a liberal. Immigrants to the United States will also bring this kind of religion more forcefully home, as the new religion census is showing. On matters such as the role of women or homosexuality, the power is increasingly moving toward those who view any diversion from traditional gender roles as unthinkable and any variation on marital heterosexuality as an abomination. And on the matter of separation of church and state, political liberalism is going to be challenged in ways as profound as in the seventeenth century. Perhaps the sheer financial power of the Northern churches will exercise some sway over the force of Third World conservatism, but I doubt it. This holds for Anglicanism as well, by the way. What I found most arresting in Jenkins’ essay is the importance in these new areas of the force of miracles, especially of the medical variety. Personally, I’ve never been embarrassed by the presence of physical miracles in the Gospels and believe them. But my own faith certainly doesn’t rest on the need for such manifestations of divine power. For growing numbers of people, however, miracles are integral to the conversion experience and the lived faith. Just as in Jesus’ time.

SCHRODER’S BOOMERANG?: A poll yesterday found the Christian Democrats inching back into the lead in Germany’s election. It’s too close to call, but there are signs that Chancellor Schroder’s near-pacifist position – no war, ever, whatever the U.N. says – might actually damage him. It has certainly damaged Germany’s relations with the U.S. and the U.K.

BLOGOSPHERE VERSUS NEW YORK TIMES: Here’s another embarrassing correction in the New York Times for September 17:

An article on June 14 about potential successors to Yasir Arafat and one on Aug. 15 about the indictment of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who is being tried by Israel on murder charges, misstated the history of his arrests and deportation. He was first arrested in 1978 at the age of 19, not 16. He was deported once, in 1987, not twice, and returned to the West Bank in 1994, not 1993. (A reader reported the errors by e-mail on Sept. 2; this correction was delayed for fact checking.)

So it took the Times up to four months [that should be three months] to correct an obvious factual error, and then fifteen more days after a reader had done their job for them? What gives? Many blogs, including this one, make errors. But most blogs correct themselves prominently within hours of finding out, and at most a day or two. Score one for little media. (Readers are hereby invited to find other extremely tardy corrections in the major media.)

DI-FI EMBARRASSED TO BE AN AMERICAN: How was this classic comment missed? Senator Diane Feinstein responded to anti-American sentiment in Europe by saying she was embarrassed to wear a U.S. flag pin. Here’s the passage from the San Jose Mercury News:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., just back from Europe, said she detected growing opposition to the United States among America’s allies. “The driver of a lot of this animus,” she said, “is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To leave this unresolved and to attack an Arab country is going to be viewed as an attack on the Arab world.” She said the anti-American sentiment was so strong that she felt it personally. “As an American, I have always been proud,” Feinstein said. Referring to her U.S. flag pin, she said, “I was embarrassed to wear it.”

Revealing, huh? For Feinstein, American foreign policy should be dictated by the views of a continent fixated on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, rather than American interests. And Feinstein’s Jewish and not-so-liberal! If the Democrats want the country to believe that they’re capable of guarding national security, they should surely avoid statements like that.

THOSE HIV STATS: I’m a big skeptic of most HIV statistics and the sloppiness of much reporting about the epidemic. But this story from the BBC manages to produce two statistics within a few paragraphs. First, one in nine South Africans is HIV-positive; then one in five is. The BBC. Is it becoming Reuters?

SOME LIKE IT HOT: Some flies go gay when the temperature rises. More evidence for a genetic component for homosexuality.

From London’s Evening Standard, the following paragraph today:

And the Arab League’s ambassador to London, Ali Muhsen Hamid, gave the first indication that the inspectors might not be allowed the unfettered access required when he said they could inspect only “military sites”.

Why am I not surprised?

“If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe.” – George Galloway, Scottish Labour deputy and leading anti-war campaigner, in the Guardian. Give him points for candor.

OBITS TO DIE FOR: “As well as being a nude model for artists, Eileen Fox undertook work as a film extra, specialising in crowd scenes that called for gummy medieval serfs. One of her last appearances was in Kevin Costner’s ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ (1991). In 1980 she took British Airways to the Court of Appeal, alleging that she had been bitten on the bottom while travelling on one of the company’s Boeing 747s to the Seychelles. ‘It was a jumbo jet and they must have been elephant fleas,’ she told reporters afterwards. She claimed that the unsightly bites cost her professional earnings as a nude model. Lord Justice Megaw and his colleagues were not convinced.” – from another priceless Telegraph obit today.