The Dish

What happened to British left-wing journalist, Robert Fisk, was terrible. He was attacked by a crowd of angry Afghans, after his car broke down in a dangerous spot. But what he said about it is so deeply revealing, it’s worth recording. “If I had been them, I would have attacked me,” he said. Think about that for a minute. He doesn’t excuse their violence – “It doesn’t excuse them for beating me up so badly” – yet he feels they were morally justified in what they did. Isn’t that exactly what the far left essentially meant in the wake of September 11: that the massacre was wrong but understandable? And doesn’t it suggest that the only moral difference between these intellectuals seduced by violence and the terrorists themselves is the will and capacity to actually translate beliefs into action?

I mean the Guardian, that is, the leading Western anti-war newspaper. In today’s editorial, it folds. It concedes that there is still fighting to come, that the war isn’t over, that humanitarian problems will no doubt continue. Then the kicker: “All that is true, but it absolutely misses the bigger picture, which is that the US-led campaign in Afghanistan continues to be far more successful than the pessimists, and even most optimists, ever thought possible. It is always harder to act than not to act, but the action taken by the US has been largely vindicated, at least in the short term… This is not a reason for silly gloating; but it certainly ought to be a reason for those who have consistently claimed to know that each stage of the operation would create some new and worse catastrophe to confess that they got it wrong. Their confidence turned out to be fear. Their apparent knowledge was in fact ignorance. Their belief that history would prove them right proved only the more useful lesson that history repeats itself until it does not.” Good for the Guardian. Moderate liberals are now denying that there ever was an anti-war left; and left-liberals are now announcing that they were wrong about the war. Does it get any sweeter than that?

Well at least, Bay Area dupes are claiming him as one of their own. But what do some think we owe him? Compassion. “We’d want nothing less for our own children, who could easily have found themselves in a similar mess.” Yes, guys. And that’s the problem.

THE BRITISH ASHCROFT: Here’s Britain’s Home Secretary, David Blunkett, on those in the House of Lords who are trying to delay and amend the British government’s anti-terrorism legislation: “God willing there won’t be an attack on us over Christmas and New Year, because all those who tell me we are not [at risk] are the ones who do not have the security and intelligence information which, for my sins, I carry. And that information tells us that because of our alliance – quite rightly – with the United States and because of our vulnerability we are at risk.” Blunkett, of course, is no Ashcroft. He’s a long-standing member of the Labour Party, he’s blind, he’s relatively liberal, he may well be the next British prime minister. And what he’s doing suggests that Ashcroft, for all my protestations, isn’t the only one upping the ante.

HAMAS AMONG THE DEMOCRATS: A key aide to Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney resigned last week after writing a letter to the Hill newspaper. In the letter, Raeed Tayeh, identifying himself as McKinney’s aide, opined: “What is more disturbing to me is that many of these pro-Israeli lawmakers sit on the House International Relations Committee despite the obvious conflict of interest that their emotional attachments to Israel cause… The Israeli occupation of all territories must end, including Congress.” It turns out that Tayeh has an interesting past. According to the Forward newspaper, “Mr. Tayeh has served on the executive board of the Islamic Association for Palestine, based in Richardson, Texas and Chicago. Authorities say that the IAP’s finances are entwined with those of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also based in Richardson and Chicago. On Tuesday, the government froze the assets of the foundation, saying that it finances the terrorist group Hamas. As recently as this fall Mr. Tayeh worked as a researcher at the United Association for Studies and Research. In 1993 a convicted Hamas operative testified in an Israeli court that the UASR was the political arm of Hamas in the United States.” Puts McKinney’s long-standing flirtations with anti-Semitism in perspective, doesn’t it?

So after a good long time at the helm, the old cleric finally decided to surrender his last remaining fortress – the place where it had all begun not so very long ago. What should we do with him? Capture? House arrest? Public humiliation? I think we should let Pat Robertson get on with the rest of his life in peace, don’t you?

“Those views reflect the degree to which many residents of Longmont, a fast-growing but still conservative community of 71,000 outside of Boulder, are galvanized over Mr. Walker, the 20-year-old man from Northern California who was captured with 79 other Taliban soldiers last week in Afghanistan.” – New York Times today. Is the Times aware that some of the fastest growing regions in the country are precisely some of the most conservative leaning? Or did it even occur to them?

THE ARGUMENT ABOUT MILITARY TRIBUNALS IS NOW OVER: Jimmy Carter just came out against them. Of course they’re a good idea.

Byron York has another important piece this morning on National Review Online. Yes, it’s true the law itself bars FBI checks on gun-owners who might be terrorists, as Glenn Reynolds pointed out yesterday. So why not change the law? If this administration believes that everyone needs to sacrifice something except the NRA, they’re going to commit political suicide. The closer you look at Ashcroft’s performance yesterday, the worse it seems.

Conservatism after September 11: my take. Posted opposite and on TNR.com.

In defense of NPR; Clinton; and Satan (just kidding about the last one). Plus: more liberal laundry and computer theology.

Look, I support many of the measures the administration has put in place to try and prosecute terrorists. A large amount of the criticism has been way overblown. Military tribunals are almost certainly necessary. The war mandates changes that we shouldn’t contemplate in peacetime. The priority right now is to prevent more massacres of American citizens. But you’d have to be brainless not to realize that many of these measures can be improved, amended, and corrected after a healthy debate. I’d like to see much more detail on the procedures of military tribunals; judicial review of their decisions; government eavesdropping of lawyer-client conversations only by an independent judge – not government lawyers; and other fixes. Many people – from Jeff Rosen and Laurence Tribe to Akhil Amar to Stuart Taylor Jr. – are not viscerally opposed to emergency measures but worried (as we all should be) about any unnecessary endangerment of civil liberties. They and others have made important contributions to the debate, which needs to continue. In that respect, Attorney General Ashcroft’s tone at yesterday’s hearings was way off. He came close to asserting that the Congress itself was somehow soft on terrorism for raising questions about new laws. I agree with the Washington Post today that that’s offensive and dumb. The administration has done a sterling job in this war so far. Hubris shouldn’t lead them to push their luck.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliché, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration Enron did so much to put in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don’t work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Mr. Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.” – Paul Krugman, New York Times today.

WHILE I’M AT IT: “Money to rebuild New York? Sorry, no.” – from the column cited above. Now, everyone knows that a large sum of federal money has already been apportioned to New York City for recovery and rebuilding. So what can Krugman mean? Read the column again and you’ll see there’s no qualification here. He doesn’t say “More money to rebuild New York?” Or: “Enough money to rebuild New York?” Is Krugman unaware of the funding? Or is this simply a smear?

Even the cartoonists are joining in.

MY POLITICS AND YOURS: Here’s a diverting little quiz. It asks you all sorts of economic, social and political questions and then plots your politics on a little graph. It doesn’t simply go right to left. It also measures you on a libertarian/authoritarian axis as well. Some of the questions need far more context and are way too crude. But the exercise does help show how our new politics has to be thought of outside a crude right-left paradigm. I’m fascinated to know where my readers end up, but don’t email me to let me know. I’ll be flooded. The scores run from – 10 to + 10 on the economic left-right axis; and – 10 to + 10 on the social libertarian-authoritarian axis. No surprise that I’m in the economic right/social libertarian box. I’m slightly more economically conservative (+ 6.25) than I’m socially libertarian (- 4.10). And the box I’m in is the least populated there is.