The Dish

After reading the transcript of bin Laden’s sickening discourse with his fellow religious lunatics, a couple of things strike me. The first is that anyone who doubts the genuineness of this man’s faith, the inextricability of a twisted fundamentalist Islam with this form of terror, is simply in denial. The second thing that’s obvious is that the only thing bin Laden respects is power. Notice how he predicts that there will be mass conversions to Islam after the massacre. He believes that people, especially those in his own backyard, suck up to the powerful – and that this is the critical battle in his region. He directly rebuts Western nonsense about the Arab street being enraged by any exercise of American power in the Middle East. In fact, bin Laden proves that the best form of persuasion in that part of the world is not rhetorical but military. Pummel them and they will respect you. Talk to them nicely and you’ll end up like Robert Fisk. Best of all, pummel them and then talk. The most persuasive piece of rhetoric yet unleashed in this conflict has been the daisy cutter bomb. It’s the only argument that much of this clearly depraved culture actually respects. And when bin Laden is dead or captured, his hold on the imagination in that part of the world will collapse.

Would you run a comic strip that treats the murder of president George W. Bush as a) desirable; b) a joke? Salon just did.

“I don’t think you can overstate the importance that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism will have to the rest of the world in the century ahead — especially if, as seems possible, its most fanatical elements get their hands on nuclear and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them against their enemies.” – Ronald Reagan, “An American Life,” chapter 57.

SCORE ONE FOR YOURS TRULY: “After a mere three weeks, the press has begun to use the word, ‘quagmire.’ After three weeks, liberal critics have pronounced the war not merely lost but unwinnable, and conservative critics have declared it half-hearted. The only thing that can be said about such armchair strategists is that they cannot have a clue what they’re talking about.” – yours truly, Sunday Times, November 4.

JONAH’S VICIOUS ATTACK: Just kidding. A response is in the works …

Will Saletan rightly takes president Bush to task for seeming sympathetic to the plight of John Walker. But he cannot use the rhetoric of this war and make an exception for a terrorist simply because he is a young American. As Will puts it, “You can frame this as a war on terror and demand that all terrorists and those who harbor them be punished. You can frame it as a war on Afghanistan and demand that the United States spare the lives of young Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. But you can’t call it a war on terror and spare-much less harbor-the one al-Qaida fighter known to be an American. That’s not a perspective. That’s a lie.” Amen.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
“Moderns in Marin try to live down their mothers back in Spokane (“I mean, she makes casseroles”), make up bumper-stickers for their Volvos (“Another Glass-blower for Udall”), attach tiny silver coke spoons to their high school charm bracelets, drink at “The Silenced Minority,” buy Earth shoes at “The Electric Poppy,” and get hair cuts at “Rape of the Locks,” where a black militant shampooer harasses the ladies by constantly changing the soul handshake.

“Marin’s affliction is “French bread thumb,” a wound suffered by hostesses who drink too much with hors d’oeuvres and then slice themselves instead of the bread. Marin exercises inclde Zen jogging, and dressing for tennis… The Serial is a comedy about moderns struggling to keep their chins above the rising sea of their status anxieties. It is a Baedeker guide to a desolate region, the monochromatic inner landscape of persons whose life is consumption, of goods and salvations, and whose moral makeup is the curious modern combination of hedonism and earnestness.” – George Will reviewing the novel, Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County, by Cyra McFadden, in 1977.

EPIPHANY WATCH: “Three months ago, the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, and what happened to the Bay Area? One of our young men, from Marin County no less, was captured in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban. This provided the only chuckle of the war, yet led to an entirely serious debate about whether John Walker, Taliban Ranger, is an only-from-Marin phenomenon or not. Well, folks, he wasn’t from Nebraska. Now that would be news, although not as good a story. Walker is the worst thing that’s happened to Marin County since peacock feathers, and everybody has an opinion. Why the big fuss in the Bay Area? Because we’ve had a crisis of belief, and our truest believer turned up with an AK-47 on the side of the enemy. ” – Rob Morse, San Francisco Chronicle.

The U.S. isn’t the only country to have spawned an idealistic suburbanite who ended up fighting for the Middle Ages in Afghanistan.

POLITICAL SITE OF THE DAY: Thanks to aboutpolitics.com for naming us their site of the day.

AIDS IN INDIA: On the plane to Chicago this evening, I got time to read two deeply rewarding essays. One was Michael Specter’s report from India on the burgeoning HIV epidemic in that country. The piece is full of the usual New Yorker high-mindedness, but it breaks ranks with orthodoxy by making a simple, arresting point. Cheap anti-HIV drugs – or even free anti-HIV drugs – have all but no relevance to curtailing the epidemic in a vast and dirt-poor country like India. It’s far more important and feasible in such a place to find innovative ways to prevent HIV infection than to treat or cure it. Specter, like all New Yorker writers, is a liberal. He’s basically sympathetic to writers like Tina Rosenberg who have laid almost the entire responsibility for the spread of HIV in the developing world at the feet of the evil pharmaceutical companies. But when Specter actually saw the situation on the ground, he saw the tragic futility of such an approach. And his intellectual honesty casts a dark shadow on the real motivations of some of those who want to use the developing world HIV crisis to cripple a free market in pharmaceuticals at home. Alas, Specter’s piece is not online. But if you get the New Yorker, don’t miss it.

WHEN AMERICA BLINKED: I also got around to Robert Kagan’s endless book review in The New Republic of David Halberstam’s tome on “Bush, Clinton and the Generals.” Like much of what Kagan writes, it was cogent, elegant and powerful. Kagan’s account of the collapse of foreign policy nerve among American elites in the past generation is a wonderful rubric through which to see the country’s recent history. It’s a polemic, of course, but that only buoys the narrative along. What you get here is an almost pristine view of the boundless potential of American power abroad, and the necessity to project it anywhere and everywhere to do good, prevent harm, and generally bring about a better world. I’m sure Kagan would consider my reaction to his often breathless naivete about the wider world to be a symptom of my own enmeshment in American decadence. But his admirable idealism and sharp intellect would, I think, be leavened if they came with at least some respect for the virtues of moderation in foreign policy, prudence in foreign engagements, and respect for other powers and cultures. Certainly, we need more of Kagan’s spirit in foreign policy – but I’d be terrified if there were no moderating influence as well. That’s why, although I’m critical of many of Colin Powell’s views, I’m glad he’s at the table in the current war. The president, I think, understands this mix. I wish that some neoconservatives, who deserve our gratitude for their powerful critique of recent foreign policy, would appreciate this more.

Yes, we now know, after much speculation, something that is obvious to any devoted fans of the Comedy Central cartoon show, “South Park.” This brilliant, scatological, hilarious concoction of anti-p.c. Gen X genius is the product of two men – Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And at a recent award ceremony hosted by People for the American Way, no less, they came out as … Republicans! Well at least I now have a quick response to the next person who asks me to sum up my politics. I’m a South Park Republican. But shhhh! Don’t tell Robert Bork.

GIULIANI ON WALKER: “I could feel sorry for someone and still string ’em up,” Rudy tells MoDo of the Times. At last a definition of “compassionate conservatism” that makes some kind of sense.

MARIN LIBERALISM: The New York Times, after yesterday’s damning profiles of Walker and Spann, goes into spin-mode today. The headline for the follow-up story, “An Improbable Incubator for a Militant Muslim,” gives the game away. The piece does its best to portray the echt-liberal enclave of Marin county as a conservative-leaning suburb, but is honest enough to let some facts get in the way. My favorite is a quote from a Marin resident: “”I find that people here are basically very forgiving, no matter what their point of view. With the Walker kid, I can’t imagine anyone here thinks he should go to jail for 25 years. I think most people are compassionate about him, especially when they think about his parents.” Notice it doesn’t even occur to her that Walker might be executed. And the thousands of victims of the terrorist group Walker aided and abetted? Compared to the pain of Walker’s parents, they don’t seem to count.

A reader objects to the term “war pessimists.” They should be called according to what they are: “defeat optimists.”

“If Israel were a Palestinian state, complete with superior firepower and all the privileges of internationally recognized statehood, and the West Bank were a Palestinian occupied Jewish enclave, do you really suppose there would be any Jews left to protest?” Norah Vincent nails the depravity, illiberalism, intolerance and hypocrisy of the ascendant Arab culture. People ask why Americans tend to sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians. It’s not racism. It’s a recognition that, for all their failings, the Israelis live in the same moral universe as we do. The Palestinians palpably, brazenly do not.

“As Streisand groped for equilibrium after Sept. 11, her shock turned to uncertainty in matters both grave and trivial. She relates, ‘One day I tell myself, ‘Screw everything, I’m getting a Carl’s Jr. hamburger and eating fried chicken three nights in a row. I don’t care about my weight.’ The next day, my optimistic side takes over and I think, ‘Wait a minute, life goes on, people will get wiser, justice will prevail. Maybe I should watch my diet.’ I’m still in that state of confusion.'” – Barbra Streisand, on her response to September 11. To be fair, she also has some decent and appropriate things to say as well. Then she plugs her new album.

The esteemed Bill Buckley worries that Osama is achieving a mythic status of invulnerability. Something tells me Buckley couldn’t be more wrong. Chill, Bill. We’re gonna get him. And soon. And then the myth implodes in exact proportion to its inflated grandeur. In fact, the myth helps us. The crushing psychological blow to the murderers and fanatics and mischief-makers who lionized bin Laden will only make our military victory more emphatic. Then on to Somalia …