The Dish

"Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things be proper or safe judges whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws," – James Madison, quoted in another excellent George Will column today.

Will is living proof that not all conservatives worship at the altar of unchecked executive power.

There’s a market for everything.

Ponnuru notes that the younger generation don’t want to stigmatize gays as much as he does.

… to go on Bill Maher’s HBO show. Hugh Hewitt disapproves. I’m scheduled for October 26, by the way.

Our final movie week Atlantic archive gem: Roger Ebert describes the escapist allure of cinema – in 1980:

"You slide down in your seat and make yourself comfortable. On the screen in front of you, the movie image appears-enormous and overwhelming. If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories."

Voting continues till we announce the Best Movie Line Ever soon after 5 pm tomorrow. Vote for your faves here. One option: these fourteen seconds of Samuel Jackson self-parody:

"Men, do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs," – Alcibiades’ Oration before the Sicilian expedition, Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War.

(Photo: Fallujah by Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty.)

Just a thought after reading the Thomas Sowell column. Sowell basically says that rebuilding Iraq from scratch is a fool’s errand – the classic conservative case against nation-building – but that we still have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next decade doing it in Iraq because, well, because … Over to Sowell:

This is not a plea for withdrawal. Whatever the situation when we went in, international terrorists have chosen to make this the place for a showdown battle. We can win or lose that battle but we cannot unilaterally end the war. It is the terrorists’ war, regardless of where it is fought.

This is a meme often deployed by the Bush-Cheney cabal: ‘This is the ground on which the terrorists have chosen to fight, therefore we have no choice.’ Note a few things. If this is truly their argument, it seems to me to behoove Bush, Cheney or Sowell to concede that the president actually goaded international terrorists to come to Iraq in the first place – "Bring them on!" This precedent means that any president can start a war, and use the chaos of disorder that such a war creates as an indefinite argument for prolonging it. It’s a war that keeps on giving. Failure means it’s even more necessary to keep failing. The dollar auction continues.

Second, why exactly is this "the terrorists’ war"? Why is our strategy necessarily determined by battlegrounds and terrain of their choosing and not ours? Has Sowell ever pondered the idea that some terrorists might actually be smart enough to choose terrain where they are strongest and we are weakest? Has it occurred to him that fighting these people among civilian populations whose languages we do not speak, whose cultures we do not understand, and whose countries we have invaded and destroyed may not be the ideal theater to fight in?

Steve Clemons calms the nerves.

The CBO puts the price of a permanent military occupation of Iraq – the current policy of all the leading GOP candidates – at $10 billion to $25 billion a year, depending on how tough it is to keep the occupation going. This does not include such things as veterans’ care, economic costs to the US of deaths and injuries, and other peripherals. It seems to me that the Republican candidates need to explain how they can reduce spending in other areas by the annual $25 billion the Mesopotamian provinces (for they are and would be plural) will absorb.

Jon Stewart summed it up best last night:

An unfortunate combination of police over-reaction and what appears to be student douche-baggery.