The Dish

Montevideo, Uruguay, 10.42 am.

A reader notes:

Israel has had, for some time now, a nuclear deterrent in the form of its three (soon to be five) Dolphin Class submarines which can carry nuclear armed submarine launched cruise missiles.

Deployed in the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean, the submarines could easily reach any target in Iran. Since Iran has no deep-water navy, the submarines are in no danger from attack.

His source is this. More here. If accurate, it would render Krauthammer’s argument about Israel’s needing US nuclear protection from a first strike risk implausible.

A weekend Atlantic archive classic: Geoffrey Nunberg’s 1983 essay on the changing nature of grammar and its police:

The point of traditional grammar was to demonstrate a way of thinking about grammatical problems that encouraged thoughtful attention to language, not to canonize a set of arbitrary rules and strictures. And in the absence of an academy, our authorities traditionally were chosen by the consensus of a public that recognized questions of grammar as worthy of constant consideration and revision. But the new attitudes toward grammar — as evidenced by the ossification of the rules and the partisan tone of the discussion — have put the whole matter on a different footing. Prescriptive grammar has passed out of the realm of criticism, where it sat for two hundred years, to become instead a branch of cultural heraldry.

A mourner cries during a funeral of Riyadh al-Nuri, a senior aide to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the home town of al-Nuri in the Sadr City Shiite district on April 12, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. Al-Nuri was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Kufa near The holy Shiite city of Najaf on April 11, 2008 after Friday prayer. Seven people died when U.S. helicopters fired on homes and shops in Sadr City district early Saturday according to the Iraqi police and hospital officials. By Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty.

Chait responds to Ezra’s accusations that Obama has been intimidated by the Israel lobby because he won’t negotiate with Hamas:

It’s true that Obama has declared his willingness to negotiate with various dictators. But there are some key differences. First, Obama has not said he’d negotiate with terrorist groups — indeed, the centerpiece of his foreign policy is destroying al Qaeda, not negotiating with it. I think there’s a pretty clear principle operating here. When you merely have strong differences with an adversary, like the Soviet Union, you can negotiate. When your adversary is committed to your destruction, there’s nothing to talk about.

Now, it’s true that Hamas is not committed to the destruction of the United States. But it is committed to Israel’s destruction. And Israel is our ally. Now, you might think that makes the principle of not talking to enemies would be weaker, but it actually makes it stronger. We can negotiate with our own enemies at our own risk. To negotiate with the enemy of an ally is to undercut your ally.

Matt weighs in:

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for an American president to say that he wouldn’t have any diplomatic talks with Hamas as long as that’s Israel’s position as well — after all, what would they talk about? Hamas can’t make concessions to the United States nor is there much of anything the United States would concede to Hamas. So in that sense, Barack Obama’s refusal to expand his generous meetings policy to Hamas is both defensible policy and a good cheap talk way of saying something that "pro-Israel" folks like.

The more meaningful question facing an American administration would be what kind of counsel/pressure/whatever they give to the government of Israel regarding holding talks with Hamas.

Blake Hounshell writes:

Surge or no surge, it’s extremely doubtful the U.S. occupation can ultimately produce a successful Iraq—a stable, unitary, democratizing state at peace with its neighbors. The surge is merely the most preliminary precursor to this intended outcome, and even Petraeus admits that it could all come undone overnight. For that matter, Iraq is just one part of a larger strategic picture, as former CENTCOM commander Adm. William J. Fallon tried to impress upon the Bush administration before he resigned. A myopic, irrational focus on Iraq has impaired the United States from making progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict, managing the rise of China, and everything in between. In short, the Iraq war is long past being worth the $120 billion a year being spent to wage it—an amount that exceeds Iraq’s entire annual economic output.

This is hardly the fault of Petraeus, a brilliant general tasked with a nearly impossible mission. Building a decent political order in Iraq has always been something of a fantasy. Even if Petraeus somehow succeeds in bringing violence down to a manageable level, it may be generations before Iraq becomes the “dramatic and inspiring example of freedom” in the Middle East that President Bush has repeatedly invoked. Instead, it will most likely evolve into a country plagued by instability, ethnosectarian violence, weak institutions, and unreliable oil production—if we’re lucky. Few Americans would support spending $12 billion a month in Iraq if they understood that they were buying, at best, another Nigeria, and at worst, Somalia with oil.

No backing down:

I don’t think he’s wrong either. And, in this strange, constantly shifting campaign, I’m not going to venture a guess as to its impact. Matt is just as suspicious of the instant consensus that this is a killer. What we’re testing in this election is just how deeply American politics has changed in the wake of the Bush-Cheney disaster. Most seem to think it hasn’t; and Obama’s campaign is therefore a "fairy-tale." Well, we’re finding out.

While the blogosphere explodes dissecting how big a snob Obama is, the president of the United States cops to authorizing torture:

Bush also said in an interview with ABC News that he approved of the meetings, which were held as the CIA began to prepare for a secret interrogation program that included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and other coercive techniques.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people" by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at the presidential ranch here. "And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

The remarks underscore the extent to which the top officials were directly involved in setting the controversial interrogation policies.

Bush suggested in the interview that no one should be surprised that his senior advisers, including Vice President Cheney, would discuss details of the interrogation program. "I told the country we did that," Bush said. "And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

Notice that for this president, the law is an obstacle to be overcome with opinions he orders up from his underlings.

From Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s 1974 rant against the vice presidency:

It is a doomed office. No President and Vice President have trusted each other since Jackson and Van Buren. Mistrust is inherent in the relationship. The Vice President has only one serious thing to do: that is, to wait around for the President to die. This is hardly the basis for cordial and enduring friendships. Presidents see Vice Presidents as death’s-heads at the feast, intolerable reminders of their own mortality. Vice Presidents, when they are men of ambition, suffer, consciously or unconsciously, the obverse emotion. Elbridge Gerry spoke with concern in the Constitutional Convention of the "close intimacy that must subsist between the President & vice-president." Gouverneur Morris commented acidly, "The vice president then will be the first heir apparent that ever loved his father."

A reader writes:

You wrote:

"Sometimes I wonder if some white Republicans actually believe that black people in this country have no reason to feel any anger or alienation at times."

Some white Republicans? Try most. And probably a good chunk of white Democrats as well. Many people want to believe in the basic goodness of this country. If there were some problems in the past, well, now they’ve all been fixed, so any lingering anger or distrust on the part of black people must mean that they hate America. I think every white person in America must have heard some version of this line of thought from at least one of their relatives at some point. My family is quite liberal and I’ve heard it.

Obama is trying to get white people to be honest about this as well as to understand where black anger comes from and why criticism and dissent is not incompatible with being fully American. At the same time he is trying to get African-Americans to be honest about the fact that things are not the same as they were a generation ago and that one of the great things about this country is that change for the better is possible. This is one more area where Obama embraces authentic complexity and rejects simplistic half-truths.