The Dish

Thoreau levels judgment:

I’m not writing this to defend libertarianism from the charge of being infiltrated by the GOP.  I’m writing this to argue that the GOP has not been overcome by libertarianism.  Those are two entirely different things.  From where I sit, I see some useful idiots for the GOP in the libertarian ranks, but I see precious little libertarianism animating the Republicans.  If you’re going to blame us for anything, blame us for shilling, not for animating.

Yesterday, Tom Ricks rightly complained that Pete Wehner misquoted him. Wehner, caught red-handed, doubles down. Sigh. It's not a close call. Wehner claims Ricks wrote "I think staying in Iraq is immoral." What Ricks actually wrote is the following, as an argument for keeping troops longer in Iraq:

I think staying in Iraq is immoral, but I think leaving immediately would be even more so, because of the risk it runs of leaving Iraq to a civil war that could go regional. That is, I don't expect much to be gained by staying, but I think much, much more could be lost by leaving right now. Just pulling out unilaterally reminds me of Jerry Rubin's comment back in the 1960s that after the revolution, he would just "groove on the rubble."

My italics.

This question was a matter of some debate between me and Ricks recently, and Ricks' position of keeping more troops there for a longer period – which won't win him much applause from the liberals and realists who admire his work – was recently outlined in the New York Times. I'm concerned that there will never be a moment when post-sectarian politics allows US troops to leave, because Iraq is Iraq, and so we should leave sooner rather than later, preferably when the future Iraqi government demands that we do. But Tom's case is a strong one pragmatically, and he is admirably facing up to the conflicts he feels about it.

I know this kind of position is a little intricate for the ideological mindset, but it is intellectually honest and deserves being treated seriously as an argument, rather than as a truncated rhetorical bludgeon.

Why can most neoconservatives never concede error?

Diane Ravitch makes her case against a program she once endorsed:

NCLB requires that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When the legislation was signed in 2002, this goal was wildly unrealistic–and now, it is merely laughable. The target date is only four years away, but no state is remotely close to 100 percent proficiency. Indeed, in 2008, 35,000 of the nation’s schools bore the stigma of "failing" because they weren't making sufficient progress toward that utopian target.

What NCLB has done with its proficiency deadline is set a timetable for the demolition of American public education.

In an effort to meet NCLB’s unattainable goal and avoid the "failing" label, most states have dumbed down their standardized tests or their definitions of proficiency. Many states claim that large majorities of their students are “proficient” in reading or math, but their claims are refuted by federal assessments (called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP) that are given to all students in fourth and eighth grades every other year. For example, Texas reported that 85 percent of its students in those grades were proficient readers based on year-end state testing, but, on the NAEP, only 29 percent were. Nationwide, NAEP scores have gone up in math since 2003, but the rate of improvement has been less than before the passage of NCLB. In eighth-grade reading, there was no improvement at all from 1998 to 2007.

The Dish has featured reviews of Ravitch's book by Tyler Cowen and Sara Mosle. Max Fisher rounds up commentary on Obama's recently released proposals for reforming NCLB.

Nowshera, Pakistan, 11 am

Netanyahu isn't backing down. Contra Chait, Yglesias doesn't think that Israel is at much risk of blow-back:

The current government in the West Bank is probably the most moderate we’ve ever seen, while Israel is governed by a right/far-right coalition that’s the least moderate we’ve ever seen. But of course the bulk of voters don’t pay attention to this sort of thing. So I think Congress is less likely than ever to question the upside-down nature of the US-Israel client-superpower dynamic.

The Israeli government is preventing the US president from achieving a core goal of his election: reorienting the US relationship with the Muslim world, reaching out to moderate Muslims, defusing the appeal of Jihadism, and securing a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. And where does AIPAC and the Congress stand? With Netanyahu – against Obama.

Noah Pollak tells the US president to bring it on::

All the pro-Israel heavies are coming to D.C. in a few days for the AIPAC policy conference, the single most important event of the year for the pro-Israel community. And now Obama has set it up so that pretty much the only thing people are going to be talking about is this crisis — and not just talking, but planning how to push back.

John Cole responds to Pollak:

The reason AIPAC has so much sway with Congress is because the American people honestly have no idea who or what AIPAC is, and having them trying to act as a co-equal branch of government could be quite, shall we say, illuminating…

In her recent profile of the Texas Board of Education, Mariah Blake mentions the woman who pushed to remove Jefferson:

After the 2006 election, Republicans claimed ten of fifteen board seats. Seven were held by the ultra-conservatives, and one by a close ally, giving them an effective majority. Among the new cadre were some fiery ideologues; in her self-published book, Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond rails against public education, which she dubs “tyrannical” and a “tool of perversion,” and says sending kids to public school is like “throwing them into the enemy’s flames.” (More recently, she has accused Barack Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer and suggested he wants America to be attacked so he can declare martial law.)

Sounds like a future Fox News host to me.

Goldblog reports: get Netanyahu into an alliance with Kadima, rather than the Israeli right-wing crazies.

Must-read.

A priest is discovered to have been actively molesting children. His superior is notified in 1980. One of the things he is told of is the priest's forcing an 11 year old boy to perform oral sex on him. The superior does not contact the police. He approves a transfer of the priest to a different city, where the priest is required to undergo therapy but is also subsequently able to resume his work with access to children. Six years later, the priest is again found guilty of abusing children. This time, he serves a sentence, but he is subsequently allowed to resume work as a priest, with the church authorities hiding his past from future parishes, and is only removed from his position three days ago.

Joseph Ratzinger was the superior, he reviewed the man's files in 1980, and he was subsequently in charge of reviewing all sex abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine Of The Faith in Rome. He was integral to the policy of hushing up as much of this as possible. Money quote:

Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction.

Benedict not only served as the archbishop of the diocese where the priest worked, but also later as the cardinal in charge of reviewing sexual abuse cases for the Vatican. Yet until the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced that Father Hullermann had been suspended on Monday, he continued to serve in a series of Bavarian parishes.

In 1980, the future pope reviewed the case of Father Hullermann, who was accused of sexually abusing boys in the Diocese of Essen, including forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The future pope approved his transfer to Munich.

We don't know what lies ahead in Germany but if the story follows the pattern in the US, Australia and Ireland, the number of victims will grow, and the church hierarchy will at first blame anti-Catholic media for attacking the church, and at some point, the whole grisly truth will come out. Except this time, the current Pope himself will be – and already is – at the center of the storm.

If this person headed a secular organization, or if he were a politician, he would be forced to resign. Why are the standards for the Catholic church so much lower on tolerance of child abuse than the rest of society? On what grounds can this Pope reprimand bishops and priests in Ireland or the US when he seems deeply entangled in the same kind of cover-ups himself?

When, in other words, will the real victims come first? And moral responsibility meaningfully taken?

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI by Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty.)

"Here we have a major split between the U.S. and Israel, with key American military and political leaders explaining … that Israeli actions are directly harming U.S. interests and jeopardizing American lives.  And what is the reflexive, unambiguous response of virtually every American Israel-centric neocon?  To side with Israel over the U.S.  AIPAC, the ADL, Elliott Abrams, AIPAC-loyal Democrats in the House, Marty Peretz, Commentary, etc. etc. all quickly castigated the U.S. Government and defended Israel, notwithstanding the dangers to Americans posed by Israeli conduct and the massive price paid by the U.S. in so many ways for this relationship (by contrast, J Street called the administration's anger towards Israel both "understandable and appropriate"). 

There's nothing wrong with taking Israel's side per se — one is and should be free to criticize one's own government in its foreign policy — but incidents like this make it increasingly futile to try to suppress what is glaringly visible:  that (as is true for numerous groups in the U.S.) a significant segment of the neoconservative Right (which includes some evangelical Christians and some American Jews) are guided in their political advocacy by their emotional, religious, and cultural attachment to another country, and want U.S. policy shaped to advance that devotion.

On a related note:  there has been a long-standing effort to equate those who make this observation with anti-Israel hatred or even anti-Semitism.  Two widely-cited reports did exactly that with regard to me recently:  this pseudo-scholarly report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this post on the blog of the American Jewish Committee, both of which hurl all sorts of ugly though trite accusations at me for daring to suggest that some American Jews are guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel.  I'll just note that the author of both "reports" is someone named Adam Levick, who — with extreme, unintended irony — lists this as his biography on his Twitter account:

I'm an American who just made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and love America and my new country,"

– Glenn Greenwald.